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of the Gleologicy; Sin 
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Presented by UY Oe Parron . 


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Palmer , Byron . 
God's white throne 


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GOD'S WHITE THRONE 
KAN OF PRINCE 


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JUN 29 1914. 


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Gi OGICAL sey)” 


A Rational, Evangelical Theodicy 


BY 
‘THE REV. BYRON PALMER, A. M., 8. T. D. 


‘‘And I saw a great white throne, and 
Him that sat on it.’?—Rerv. xx, 11 


FOURTH HDITION. 


CINCINNATI 
PRESS OF JENNINGS AND GRAHAM 
1904 


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COPYRIGHT, 1904, BY 


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_ BYRON PALMER, 


Arvicatinn 


ya 4 


I rejoice to dedicate this book to her, the 
companion of my life, who, through the 
years of my suffering and invalidism, 
has been unfailing in her Christian 
faith and fortitude, and by her 
cheerfulness, courage, and devo- 
tion has made life sweeter, 
hope brighter, and given to — 

suffering a compensation. 


Tue AUTHOR. 


Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2022 with funding from 
Princeton Theological Seminary Library 


https://archive.org/details/godswhitethronerOOpalm 


PREFACE. 


y 4 


SEVERAL years ago, in reading the life of 
Charles Kingsley, I came upon these lines 
which he had written to a friend:— 

‘‘T am writing nothing now; but taking 
breath and working in the parish—never 
better than I am at present; with many 
blessings, and, awful confession for mortal 
man, no sorrows! I sometimes think there 
must be terrible arrears of sorrow to be 
paid off by me—that I may be as other 
men are! God help me in that day!’’ 

Again he wrote :— 

‘*T am better off now than I have been 
for years! God be thanked, and God grant, 
too, that I may not require to be taken 
down by some terrible trouble. I often 
fancy I shall be. If I am, I shall deserve 

5) 


6 Preface. 


it as much as any man who ever lived. I 
say so now—justifying God beforehand 
lest I shail not have faith and patience 
enough to justify him when the punishment 
comes. ’’ 

f was deeply impressed by the fears 
and finally the experiences of that good 
man. lor the ‘‘terrible trouble’’ did come 
to him at last. I wondered whether I 
should have the patience to endure and 
faith enough in God not to doubt or de- 
spair in case the hand of affliction ever 
should be laid upon me as heavily as I saw 
it resting upon many whom I knew. 

I was then in the vigor of perfect health 
joyfully anticipating many years of serv- 
ice in the work which I had just begun and 
loved so much. | 

I had seen what seemed to be strange 
workings of providence affecting the lives 
of others, and had tried to encourage hope 
and faith and cheer in those who were 
bowed with sorrow or baffled with unbelief. 


Preface. 7 


But as I had had no experience in the 
things that troubled others, I felt that 
what I said and did to help them must have 
been to them only a professional echo and 
not a voice out of a life that was capable 
of real sympathy. 

Before my own life of suffering in si- 
lence and seclusion began, the larger prob- 
lems of darkness and disorder in the world, 
and in human life in general, were driven 
home to me by a conversation which I had 
with a noted infidel. He doubted the exist- 
ence of a God who took any interest in 
human life, and denied that there was any 
goodness or wisdom in the order of the 
world. He declared that there was no 
good God, no moral government—all was 
heartless, blind, inexorable law; this and 
nothing more. 

T felt that this was not true, but to my- 
self I had to confess that sometimes it did 
look that way. 

When at last came the ordeal of being 


8 Preface. 


shut away from the world, and of leaving 
my life’s work, and of being compelled to 
accept the life and the lot of a daily suf- 
ferer, my mind naturally turned to the 
problems which experience had made up- 
permost in my daily meditations. It be- 
came necessary for me to seek and find a 
satisfactory solution of, not only the prob- 
lem of personal suffering, but of the larger 
problems of human life and destiny, of the 
apparent misadjustments in the world, of. 
the seeming contradictions in the course of 
providence, of the absence of order in di- 
vine government, and the apparent defeat 
of righteousness and truth in the world. 

In seeking for mental and spiritual 
peace in the midst of my own suffering 
and disappointment, I came to see as never 
before that the problem of personal expe. 
rience did not stand alone, but was related 
to and was a part of every problem that 
involves the beneficence and wisdom of 
God’s moral government in the world. My 


Preface. 9 


quest for peace of mind and heart there- 
fore led me away from myself to the in- 
finitely larger world without and to the re- 
lation which every soul sustains in the 
moral harmony of things in divine govern- 
ment. Not until then did I experience the 
faith in God and the patience to abide by 
his wisdom and goodness which gave me 
rest. 

This book is therefore in a certain sense 
the author’s experience in his effort to dis- 
cover the ways and the will of God. But in 
a truer sense it is an effort to help ail who 
are troubled with doubt and disbelief either 
from personal experience or from their 
observations in the dark hemisphere of the 
world’s life. To all such the author ex- 
tends his sympathy and the help which his 
experience may afford. Cordially, 


BYRON PALMER. 
ASHTABULA, OuHto, June, 1904. 


ee A 


CONTENTS 


Pg 
CHAPTER 
I. Tor Dark HEMISPHERE, - 
II. VANQUISHED FAITH, - - - 
Ill. Gop REIens, - - - - 
IV. DIvinE PURPOSE, - - - 
V. THE RacEe UNDER DISCIPLINE, 
VI. THE GoaL OF THE INDIVIDUAL, 
VII. PRAYER AND PROVIDENCE, - 
VIII. Tue Ittustrious SUFFERER, - 
IX. THe SuPREMACY OF LOVE, . - 


11 


PAGE 


115 


150 


176 


202 


an x 
wil 4/8; 


vi ? 


1 
Ud! 


GOD’S WHITE THRONE. 


CHAPTER I. 


Tur DarK HEMISPHERE. 


We live in a world of mystery. No mat- 
ter which way we turn we are sure to meet 
with mystery before we have gone far. 
From the very nature of things deep shad- 
ows are cast all about us, and their dark- 
ness is not all dissolved by any view of 
life that we may take, however optimistic 
it may be, or by any conception of the 
world however comprehensive. ‘The lives 
of some are cheered by greater joys and 
brighter hopes than others, scarcely a 
shadow falls upon them; while others dwell 
in the darkness with only an occasional 
star to bless them with its beam of holy 
light. It is therefore not taking a somber 


view of life and the world to recognize 
13 


14 God’s White Throne. 


the dark things that are matters of com- 
mon experience and observation with all 
men. 

Consider the planet on which we live. 
Its surface is three-fourths a restless water 
waste, the grave already of millions of hu- 
man beings. Of the remaining land sur- 
face a very large part is composed of 
dreary deserts, rock-ribbed mountain 
ranges and vast territories that are ren- 
dered uninhabitable by perpetual ice and 
snow. Devastating storms sweep away life 
and property, and drouths burn and blast 
the fruit of man’s toil and sacrifice. The 
thin crust is shaken by subterranean explo- 
sions, and internal fires belch forth and 
burn and bury the helpless and the inno- 
cent. The history of the earth as recorded 
in the rocks reveals ages of agony and war- 
fare among the extinct tribes of the lower 
animals, and natural history seems to in- 
dicate that the living species exist for the 
sole purpose of preying on one another. 


The Dark Hemisphere. 15 


The human race itself has a_ history 
that makes one heartsick to read. Pillage, 
bloodshed, and warfare have been charac- 
teristic of civilized nations but little less 
than of savage tribes. The brute nature 
has predominated. Intellectual and moral 
greatness have not been the chief glory and 
pursuit of the race. Some progress has 
been made, but what a record! From the 
time the race emerged from the mist of 
oblivion it has been a sluggish, stupid 
stream that has wound its weary way 
through the tanglewood and marsh of time, 
having its stagnations, its backwaters, and 
its divided currents; and these for the most 
part have lost their way. As a whole, the 
race is still a seething mass of helpless, un- 
developed, stupid creatures. One-half of 
the world do not have enough food to eat, 
or clothes and shelter sufficient to keep 
them decent and comfortable. There are 
hundreds of millions of human beings in 


16 God’s White Throne. 


the nations of the Orient, eastern Europe, 
the Dark Continent, and in the crowded 
cities of both hemispheres, who are of little 
or no good to the world. One hundred mil- 
lion inhabitants might be swept from exist- 
ence in the heart of China, and the world 
would move on without missing them. 

Is there a God who rules this world and 
who eares for the children of his creation? 
What then of the plagues and epidemics 
and pestilences and famines and storms 
and earthquakes and disasters by sea and 
by land that have swept multiplied millions 
of his children from the earth as though 
they were of no more value than as many 
insects? What of the suffering and poy- 
erty and idiocy and insanity and dumbness 
and deafness and blindness and deformity 
and injustice and slander and persecution 
and crime and corrupt morals and disease 
and death from which the good as well as 
the evil must suffer? What of the reptiles 
and vermin and parasites and bacteria and 


The Dark Hemisphere. 17 


thistles and thorns and noxious weeds? 
Why is there never a day or an hour when 
one’s life and health and property and 
good name are not imperiled? Why should 
we ever be driven round between the upper 
and nether millstones of hope and fear? 

In a world where beneficence is sup- 
posed to be the order of government it 
should be expected that truth and beauty 
and goodness not only predominate, but 
are so general that evil in every form 
would seek a hiding-place, and when seen 
would be so well defined as to be recog- 
nized and so hideous as to be abhorred by 
even the most unwary. But such does not 
seem to be the case. Sin is ever visible 
and often more attractive than virtue, and 
offers its reward of pleasure at once, re- 
serving its sorrows for a day of reckon- 
ing; while virtue comes only at the cost 
of sacrifice and withholds its crown of re- 
Joicing for some future time. There may 


be means of some kind for the relief of all 
2 


18 God’s White Throne. 


suffering and remedies for all diseases, but 
they are hidden from us as yet, and man 
must still remain as in the past, the igno- 
rant but innocent victim of excruciating 
torture and incurable maladies. There has 
been progress made in medicine and a little 
more in surgery, but why were these hints 
and helps so hard to find and so long in 
coming to man’s relief? If in a beneficent 
world there should be such a thing as he- 
redity, we might expect to inherit the per- 
fections of our fathers; but we find we are 
heirs of their imperfections also. We are 
bound by the fetters of the past, and the 
future is bound by the present. The dis- 
eases and weaknesses and deformity and 
inebriety and mental aberrations and 
moral defects of our fathers are visited 
upon their children, and the generations 
coming will be cursed by the crimes and 
misfortunes of this. 

What is true of heredity is true of sol- 
idarity. We are by nature social beings, 


The Dark Hemisphere. 19 


and human society is so intimately organ- 
ized that no man can live unto himself 
alone. Consciously or otherwise all men 
reciprocally influence each other for good 
or for evil. But why for evil? Why not 
for good alone? Why must an honest man 
suffer because others by their dishonesty 
have shaken the confidence of his fellow- 
men? Why must a worthy, aspiring youth 
who happens to come from a disreputable 
family or community be despised and dis- 
criminated against as though no good thing 
could come out of Nazareth? Why should 
the industrious and the frugal be burdened 
by the necessities of the idle and the shift- 
less? Why must good government and 
good society often be defeated and ever be 
imperiled by the criminal, the pauper, and 
the ignorant elements. The law works for 
good as well as evil, it is true; but why 
must the helpless and the innocent suffer 
under its operations? 

Again, why should the truth be so ob- 


20 God’s White Throne. 


scure? Why should truth and error be so 
mixed that the world must ever be so mis- 
taken as to their identity? Had the truth 
been clearly defined, who can imagine what 
a different course the history of the world 
would have taken? Think of the wars and 
persecutions and political and religious 
strife and doctrinal controversies that have 
arisen from error, ignorance, and intoler- 
ance! Think of the bloody work of the 
guillotine, the stake, the gibbet, the scaf- 
fold, the block, the dungeon, the rack, and 
the hundred other torturous inventions of 
fiendish ingenuity for extorting confession 
and extinguishing the light of freedom and 
truth, all because error and truth have been 
so mixed that even the wise and conscien- 
tious have been mistaken and thought they 
were doing God’s service in persecuting 
the righteous! Among the lower animals 
instinct is the sure guide, and for man’s 
animal life instinct and a small degree of 
intelligence is sufficient; but for emanci- 


The Dark Hemisphere. 21 


pation of the mind and the upward flight 
of the soul’s aspirations, for peace of heart 
and joy of hope, for sure knowledge of the 
truth and the right and an undisturbed con- 
fidence in a beneficent end for the world 
and human life, is it not strange that we 
have not more to help us and less to hin- 
der? Yes, we have the Bible; but hundreds 
of sects and tens of thousands of teachers 
differ and divide on what the Bible means. 
Some say it is not inspired, some say it is 
inspired a little, some say it is inspired in 
places, while others say every word is in- 
spired. Besides only a comparatively 
small part of the human family have ever 
seen the Bible as yet. There are other 
sacred books and other religions besides 
Christianity. Is the Bible the exclusive 
book of revelation? Why then does so 
large a part of the world yet sit in dark- 
ness, and why did so many centuries pass 
after the full revelation was given before 
its sacred pages were put in print and 


29 God’s White Throne. 


placed in the hands of the common people 
for their comfort and instruction? 

Why did so many thousand years go by 
before the world’s Redeemer came, and 
why was not some provision made for the 
immediate spread of his truth and grace 
among all nations? What do the dead and ~ 
forgotten nations and literature and arts 
and civilizations and achievements of the 
early centuries of history signify for the 
present age? Why should we have to dig 
among the ruins of ancient cities and dese- 
erate the tombs of the dead to find only a 
few chance fragments of the arts and cul- 
ture and history and religious beliefs of an- 
tiquity? Is the human race a degenerate 
offspring from perfect parents, spotless 
from their Maker’s hand, or is man the 
product of an almost endless process of 
evolution which began countless ages ago, 
of which firemist, protoplasm, mollusk, 
monkey, man, is an epitome? Is death the 
end? Where are the departed, and why 


The Dark Hemisphere. 23 


may we not hold fellowship with them? 
Why should such a large per cent of the 
race die in infancy, and so few of those who 
survive ever rise above the plane of the 
animal life? Why should men and women 
having great promise of usefulness to the 
world so often die just when they are most 
needed and best prepared to do good, while 
others who are so wicked and worthless 
that it would have been better for the world 
had they never been born, are permitted to 
live on to curse the world rather than bless 
it? Why should parents be taken away 
leaving families of innocent orphans help- 
less and homeless? Why should so many 
who violate about every law of good health 
and pure morals still be healthy, prosper- 
ous, and popular, while others who practice 
plain living and high thinking, serving God 
and their fellow-men faithfully, become 
broken in health and spend the rest of their 
lives suffering in silence? 

If there is light there is also darkness; 


24: God’s White Throne. 


if truth, there is error usually mixed with 
it; if goodness, there is evil always near it, 
often looking even more attractive and bet- 
ter than the good; if songs of joy, they all 
have their notes of sadness. Alas, the list 
of evils that look like stains upon God’s 
white throne is almost endless, and the 
darkness that occasions doubt deepens as 
one tries to enumerate and explain the 
mysteries that make up the dark hemi- 
sphere of our world’s life. 

But there is light along the horizon. If 
doubts arise, let us look to the light. If we 
despair, let us still keep our eyes fixed on 
the light. If hope should disappear, let us 
all the more resolutely keep our eyes on the 
golden promise of the morning. There is 
no other light, and the darkness is only a 
passing night. It is but temporal. The 
light is eternal. God is its source. 


CHAPTER II. 
VANQUISHED FAITH. 


Farrn in God is the normal attitude of 
the soul in the presence of all the unex- 
plainable problems of human life. It seems 
to be a higher activity of the soul than 
reason, and is commissioned to lead in 
realms where reason loses its way. Where 
knowledge fails it is the function of faith 
to over-reach the narrower limits of the 
mind and lay firm hold upon the very sub- 
stance of eternal realities. But naturally 
it is easier for us to believe what we can 
demonstrate, and when we can not demon- 
strate to doubt. Unfortunately we are so 
constituted. 

But should there be any who do not 
doubt at times, the absence of doubt should 


not be considered a proof of the presence 
25 


26 God’s White Throne. 


of faith. In the absence of tests, faith may 
be simply a passive mental process having 
no moral content whatever. To be merely 
an heir or recipient of what others have be- 
lieved is not faith, for faith implies mental 
and moral activity. He who has never suf- 
fered in the dungeon of doubt may well 
wonder whether he yet has had enough ex- 
perience in the perplexing things of life 
to put to the test what faith he may pos- 
sess. Or he may question whether he 
knows enough of the ways of God to have 
any good ground for what he believes, or 
be sure that he really believes much of any- 
thing. 

But, supposing there are those whose 
faith never fails them even in the severest 
tests, there are many more who are equally 
earnest, whose faith often gives way to 
doubt and despair on account of the dark 
things of the world and life. For the pres- 
ence of so much physical and moral evil in 
a world that is thought to be governed by 


Vanquished Fath. 97 


a beneficent God has caused more believers 
to doubt, and has driven to despair more 
seekers after truth than perhaps any other 
fact of human experience. Nor is this sur- 
prising. When we think of the uncertainty, 
obscurity, physical evil, and moral disorder 
that exist, the wonder is that there are not 
even more who doubt whether there be any 
good providence and moral order in the 
world. Evil and error of every kind have 
_ wrought such ruin and still run riot to such 
a degree that it looks as though there were 
an almost infinite demon at work in the 
world, whose mischief makes about as much 
misery as God’s goodness gives of peace 
and happiness. 

In the presence of such mysteries both 
reason and faith are often hurled back in 
defeat, and doubt and despair triumph. 

But there is an attribute in every man 
that is sufficiently divine to cause him to 
abhor the idea of an unrighteous, unholy, 
and unwise God. He would rather have no 


28 God’s White Throne. 


God at all than such an one. He would take 
refuge in atheism, rather than think that 
the infinite God is an evil-doer and the 
author of all the sufferings of the world, or 
in his helplessness is unable to prevent it. 

It is therefore the creed of some and 
the thought of most people at times, that 
there is an evil one, some rival power who 
is the foe of God and the human race, who 
is the author of all this darkness and de- 
struction. They will not have it that an 
infinitely good and wise God is responsible 
for so much confusion in his world. They 
therefore vindicate God and indict the 
devil, who it seems is almost equal to God 
and in much gets the best of him. If this 
could be done it would be an easy way for 
us to justify eur impatience in times of 
trouble. We couid then charge them up to 
the devil and be as vindictive as we wished. 
But it would not be so easy a matter to 
point out where infinite wisdom and good- 
hess end, and where the evil work begins; 


Vanquished Faith. 29 


or what is good, and to whom and under 
what circumstances it is such. Any 
attempt to point out what is the work of 
divine goodness in this world, and what the 
mischief of a demon, would be preposter- 
ous. 

But should we succeed in escaping the 
difficulty that perplexes us by attributing 
all that we call evil to a demon or any num- 
ber of demons, instead of believing God is 
responsible for it, we are at once plunged 
into another that is equally perplexing to 
both our mental and moral natures. The 
universe would be divided against itself. 
God having abdicated his throne of abso- 
lute sovereignty, has divided his authority 
with an evil power whose energies are all 
devoted to confusion and destruction. But 
two rulers whose powers are in any pro- 
portion to the good and the evil that exist 
would be a fatal dualism. The attempt to 
explain existing evils in this way may in- 
deed be worthy of an honest soul who cher- 


30 God’s White Throne. 


ishes and clings to his faith in God, but 
others would get no comfort from it. The 
rock that may be a firm foundation for his 
faith would wreck and ruin the faith of 
others. There is a more satisfactory 
course than this, as we shall see. God does 
not share his authority with another, and 
yet his throne is white. 

There are many who do not pretend to 
understand or attempt an explanation of 
the dark and crushing facts of life. They 
do not doubt God’s goodness, and yet they 
can not believe that all things work to- 
gether for good to themselves or to others, 
even though they love God and try to do his 
will. They are not stoical or indifferent 
toward suffering. They feel deeply, and 
desire a smoother and firmer path for their 
feet. They wonder why there should be so 
little in life for them to enjoy, and so little 
for them to hope for in the future. To 
them the world is dark and life drags heav- 
ily. Bruised and brokenhearted, they bow 


Vanquished Faith. 31 


to the inevitable and spend their days in 
sorrow. Like a bird with a broken wing, 
they look upward, but can not fly. Hope 
they have not. Faith has failed them, 
but—God has not. 

Others are so self-centered that all is 
well while matters go well with them. They 
can look upon the calamities that befall 
others and maintain a well poised faith. 
They may even reprove them for their lack 
of faith and their inability to see some good 
providence in their griefs and misfortunes. 
But let broken health and blasted hopes 
once come to them; let misfortune come 
their way and deprive them of position or 
property or reputation or loved ones; let 
their lot be no more than falls to the aver- 
age man; then they are of all men most 
miserable. They will not be comforted. 
Sympathy is only mockery. God will not 
answer their prayers. He has abandoned 
them entirely, or is dealing with them too 
harshly. Their sufferings are unjust. 


22 God’s White Throne. 


They lose faith in both man and God. The 
world is dreary, and life is to them not 
worth living. To work and to weep is their 
unhappy lot. They wish they never had 
been born. Out of the world: out of mis- 
ery, they think. And yet this is the best 
conceivable world for them to live in. For 
not in the world, but within their own 
selves resides the power to make life 
sweeter than any song or richer than treas- 
ures of gold. 

There are those too who have no faith 
in a supremely wise God, simply because 
they can not see wisdom and beneficence 
in the adjustments of the world. If there 
is a God and he governs in the affairs of 
men, they are opposed to his government. 
If they were to administer the governing 
forces of the world it would be managed. 
better. Their self-esteem is sufficient to 
lead them to think that, had they been con- 
sulted about creation, they could have of- 
fered suggestions, which, had they been fol- 


Vanquished Fath. 33 


lowed, would have brought into existence 
a better world than we have. 

In all candor it will have to be admitted 
by every one that to the finite mind this 
world is an infinite enigma. But with equal 
candor it must also be admitted that in- 
ability to understand is no justification for 
doubt. Ought the child doubt his parents’ 
love and wisdom because he can not under- 
stand why they require of him obedience 
and reverence, and deny him pleasures that 
are detrimental? Supposing the child to 
be entirely incapable of comprehending the 
wisdom and foresight of his parents, and 
what they believe to be for the highest good 
and happiness of their child, should the 
child still be commended for his disobedi- 
ence and doubt, and the parents be cen- 
sured for withholding from him the knowl- 
edge of things he can not comprehend? 

We dwell in a world that is only as a 
pin-point on a mountain side when com- 


pared with God’s vast universe, and our 
8 


34. God’s White Throne. 


life is but as a flash of candle-light to the 
eternally blazing sun, when compared with 
the numberless cycles of eternity through- 
out whose vastness the omniscient Mind 
moves with a perfect knowledge of the be- 
ginning and the end of all things. Should 
we then doubt God because we do not un- 
derstand his motives and methods? Intol- 
erable vanity and audacity might lead to 
this, but humility and modesty never. 
Vanquished faith often takes the form 
of pessimism. Bad as the world is, it is 
continually growing worse. Evil and error 
are stronger and more prevalent than vir- 
tue and truth. Civilization is only barbar- 
ism made more cruel by refinement. The 
tendency of the human race is downward. 
Everything is undergoing a process of de- 
generation. There is no bow of promise 
arching the path of the world and no benefi- 
cent goal toward which the world is moy- 
ing. Men, society, and nature alike are not 
to be trusted. Self-interest is the end 


Vanquished Faith. 35 


sought, and the end justifies any successful 
means, even though truth and justice and 
virtue must be sacrificed in the effort. 
Christianity has departed from the life and 
teachings of its Founder, and the Churches 
which are supposed to exemplify Christ to 
the world are void of his life, his love, his 
truth, and his spirit of sacrifice. God is not 
in the world as a factor for good. But for- 
tunately for the world there are compara- 
tively few whose faithlessness takes this 
unhappy form, and as the world continues 
to grow better and brighter their number 
will ever grow less. 

Dead faith is always more dangerous 
than honest doubt, for honest doubt has life 
and conscience and has its face toward the 
light, while dead faith gropes in the dark- 
ness, not even feeling after God and caring 
little for the light. Such a type of van- 
quished faith is the quite prevalent belief 
that God is so great and so far removed 
from men that it is unworthy of him to 


36 God’s White Throne. 


take them into account or feel in any sense 
obligated to them. Men are his creatures, 
and he has a right to do with them as he 
pleases. If he rules them with a rod of 
iron, what are they that they should protest 
oraskareason why? It is for them to take 
what comes, and let things go as they may. 
From eternity the decree went forth fixing 
every man’s fate, and nothing that he may 
do can better his condition or benefit the 
world. This is God’s world absolutely. 
Good and evil, hope and despair, right and 
wrong, happiness and misery, life and 
death, are all equally his appointments, and 
they are unalterable. Stoically or sorrow- 
fully we must take what comes, and be 
silent. 

As an article of faith, as well as a prin- 
ciple for practical life, such a conception 
amounts to nothing short of harmful un- 
belief. It takes from God the attribute of 
condescending, fatherly love for his chil- 
dren, and it discourages the sense of re- 


a 


Vanquished Faith. 37 


sponsibility, paralyzes good endeavor, does 
violence to the sense of justice in men, and 
quickens in them none of the finer feelings 
of spirituality. Instead of Sovereign, sub- 
ject, and government, let us think of Father, 
family, and home. Such conceptions exalt 
God, elevate man to his proper relation 
with God, and give significance and inspi- 
ration to human life. 

Closely related to this fatalistic form of 
vanquished faith is that which removes God 
entirely from the world. He transcends 
the world so far that he takes no thought 
for it, and feels no interest in his creatures. 
He created the world and established its 
goings according to fixed laws, and made it 
and all living things capable of self-per- 
petuation, and then ceased to be even an 
interested observer of the world’s move- 
ments. According to this view the world 
is sufficient for all our wants, and we are 
left to make the best of it in satisfying 
them. There is no personal providence, 


38 God’s White Throne. 


We are left to the cold mercies of heartless 
nature, which, though impartial, takes no 
thought for the peculiar needs of the indi- 
vidual. There is no revelation of God or 
inspiration from him except what nature 
affords, and that is sufficient. From the 
study of nature’s laws and nature’s wis- 
dom we are to learn our duty and our des- 
tiny. There is no place for prayer. All 
answers to human supplications are but 
echoes of the soul’s secret desires. There 
is no salvation except that which we 
achieve in co-operation with nature, no 
knowledge of God except what nature af- 
fords, and no hope of a future life except 
the soul’s inextinguishable longings for im- 
mortality. 

This type of disbelief is not occasioned 
by a serious contemplation of the dark 
things of the world and a failure to find 
some ground of consolation and hope, so 
much as by an unsound philosophy and an 
unethical conception of the nature of God. 


—— re a. 


-_— = 


Vanquished Faith. 39 


As a system it hardly does credit to the 
mind, while the heart of every man pro- 
tests against it and calls for clearer light 
when the soul is allowed to speak. 

Honest doubt, for there is such, is al- 
ways deserving of sympathy rather than 
censure. Nor is there anything gained in 
treating with contempt and severity the 
doubt that may be born of insincerity. To 
be fair and frank is the best course. Rea- 
sonableness and charity toward minds and 
hearts that are perplexed and depressed 
is the cnly method that is productive of 
good results. We shall try to show that 
while doubt may have its occasion, faith 
has firm ground, and for that reason is 
more justifiable than doubt, and in the ris- 
ing soul will win at last. 

But let the doubter bear in mind that 
faith is a law of social and commercial life, 
that society would not hold together with- 
cut it, that commerce would at once be 
blocked should men cease to believe in each 


40 God’s White Throne. 


other when they can not see and under- 
stand. Let him also remember that all 
science and all philosophy have their begin- 
nings with hypotheses that must be as- 
sumed. Even mathematics, the most exact 
of all the sciences, rests upon axioms that 
can not be proven, but are self-evident, and 
must be accepted on faith. Once doubt that 
a straight line is the shortest distance be- 
tween two points, and not believe it until 
it is proven, and all higher mathematics 
goes to pieces. So in jurisprudence, in so- 
ciety, in commerce, in science, in phi- 
losophy, the only way to progress is to be- 
lieve everything that can be believed, and 
doubt nothing until it is proven to be false. 
Likewise, in endeavoring to penetrate the 
mysteries of the world and life we must be- 
heve, even if we can not understand. Mys- 
tery does not mean that there is no truth, 
but that the truth lies beyond our grasp. 
Truth and goodness are never against rea- 
son, but they are largely beyond reason, 


a i a es 


Vanquished Faith. Al 


waiting and welcoming our ability to com- 
prehend them. The path to truth and joy 
and hope is, then, to believe unfalteringly 
that wisdom and goodness are in the plan 
of this world, and from that point as a be- 
ginning, take our departure with our faces 
ever toward the light, and the end will be 
peace. 


CHAPTER IIT. 
Gop Reriens. 


Tuat God is, that he is infinitely wise 
and good, and that his wisdom and good- 
ness are everywhere manifest, both in his 
creation and in the interest that he takes in 
the affairs of men, is the only conception 
of him that fully satisfies the human mind 
and heart. But that other things are set 
forth as substitutes for God is very well 
known. 

We hear of the ‘‘laws of nature ;’’ and, 
from what is said of them and of what they 
do, it would seem that they are about equal 
to God and make a very good substitute 
for him. But to make them so it is neces- 
sary to endow them with all the attributes 
of the infinite God, whose place of author- 


ity in the universe they are supposed to 
42 


God Reigns. 43 


occupy. Their reign is universal and eter- 
nal. Their intelligence is so perfect that 
they work with definite design and develop- 
ment toward ends moral and spiritual that 
are far beyond the power of the human 
mind to comprehend or imagine. This 
wonderful system of laws is affected by no 
sickly sentiment toward the individual. It 
is in the interest of the highest good of the 
universe as a whole that they work. This 
is the beneficent end toward which through 
infinite ages they are progressing. 
Sometimes the ‘‘forces of nature’’ are 
represented as sufficient to account for the 
world and its progress, and they, too, have 
all the attributes of an infinite Mind. They 
are eternal, and, far back in the morning of 
all existence, back so far that one’s mind 
reels in its efforts to imagine, these mighty 
forces began the work of evolving this 
beautiful world of ours and the countless 
suns and systems that compose the stellar 
world, all from the lifeless fire-dust which 


44 God’s White Throne. 


then filled the boundless ocean of space. 
For numberless ages these wonderful 
forces have been faithfully working wisely 
and beneficently toward ends that would 
do credit to infinite Intelligence. All that 
these forces require is plenty of time. Give 
them infinite ages in which to work out 
their designs, and they are equal to any 
task. 

But what do these terms “natural 
laws’? and ‘‘natural forces’? mean? A 
little thought-analysis will show that these 
laws and forces are not self-existing and 
self-acting and self-directing at all. 

Laws never do anything, and natural 
laws are no exception. They tell us the 
way in which forces act, and the regularity 
of their procedure. Civil laws do nothing. 
It is the civil officer who acts, and the law 
is the course which he is to take as an off- 
cer, and the course which, as an officer, he 
is expected to cause all citizens to observe. 
Civil laws are therefore only the methods 


God Reigns. 45 


of civil and social order. The same is true 
of laws in nature. They are methods of 
order in nature, and define the course of 
acting, natural forces. 

But what of natural forces? Are they 
not self-existing and self-acting? Or are 
they also blind, impersonal things without 
intelligence or wisdom or goodness? If the 
latter were true we should be no nearer the 
truth than we should be in attributing the 
world and its progress to simply natural 
laws. Natural forces is only a convenient 
phrase of the man of science, and is gener- 
ally used without a thought of what it sig- 
nifies. The truth is that this is only a name 
for something else. There can be no such 
thing as force independent of personality, 
either finite or infinite, and the final fact of 
all science and philosophy and theology and 
revelation is that, instead of there being 
many forces which we are wont to call nat- 
ural and impersonal, there is but one force, 
and that is spiritual and personal. The 


46 God’s White Throne. 


forces of nature are nothing else than the 
immanent God. The force that drives the 
planets in their course, the force that holds 
us to the earth and holds the earth to- 
gether, the force that keeps the minutest 
particle of matter intact and gives it iden- 
tity, the force that drives the locomotive 
and propels the wheels of factories and 
commerce, the force that carries the mes- 
Sage so mysteriously along the wire and 
across the sea, the force that flashes so in- 
stantaneously from other planets to our 
own across multiplhed millions of miles, the 
force that bears up the clouds and sends 
down the shower, the force that bursts the 
shell and sprouts the seed, that develops 
the plant and the tree and paints the beau- 
ties of the flower and the fruit, every force 
of the world and the universe, except that 
of man and whatever other finite beings 
there may be, is the activity of the infinite 
God; and the law of the force’s activity is 
nothing else than the immutable course of 


God Reigns. AT 


divine wisdom in giving to the world order 
and system. 

It is God then who reigns, instead of 
laws and forces. He is so intimately iden- 
tified with the world, and the world is so 
dependent upon him, that should he for one 
moment cease to act, all things but himself 
would cease to be. His continual activity 
in the material world is so essential to its 
existence, that his active presence amounts 
to a continuous creation. But whether 
finite personalities are by nature so per- 
sistent as to continue to exist eternally, 
without moral and vital union with the in- 
finite Source of life, is a question of phil- 
osophic speculation and Biblical interpre- 
tation on which the greatest minds and best 
hearts of the world differ. For the final 
answer to this solemn question we shall 
have to wait. We are at present concerned 
with the mysteries of this world under tne 
reign of infinite Beneficence. 

Tf, then, we are to think of the infinitely 


48 God’s White Throne. 


wise and good God, instead of natural 
forces working in the world, do we not in- 
dict him for all the death and devastation 
that follow in the path of these forces when 
they are awake and mad with fury? Tor- 
nadoes and earthquakes and floods and con- 
flagrations and wrecks and thunderbolts 
are instances of the violence of these nat- 
ural forces, which also play havoc in ten 
thousand other ways all over the world. 
Are we to think, then, that instead of nat- 
ural forces, it is God who is doing all this? 
The question is reasonable and to the point. 
We answer in the affirmative, but ask the 
patience and careful consideration of the 
reader before he allows his nature to revolt 
at the thought. 

The fact is, this world is composed of 
two hemispheres, the bright and the dark. 
We like to think of and live in the bright 
side of life, but we are all forced to feel 
and see the dark side also, and it is this 
that gives us trouble and despair. We can 


God R elgns. 49 


not get rid of the darkness, nor can we get 
rid of the thought that some one is respon- 
sible for it. But when we say that God 
reigns in this world, we do not indict him 
for any of its evils. He reigns, but his 
throne is white. His government is be- 
neficent. 

Much of the horror which we feel on 
account of accidents and catastrophies is 
due to circumstances. The farther they are 
removed from us in time and place and per- 
sonal significance, the less distressing are 
they to us. The burning and burying of 
Pompeii by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius 
in the year 79 shocks us less than the ruin 
of the city of St. Pierre by the eruption of 
Mt. Pelee nineteen centuries later. The 
drowning of thousands in China by the 
overflow of a river impresses us less deeply 
than the Johnstown or Galveston horror in 
our own land. The death of multitudes in 
a single disaster is more horrifying than 
the death of many times that number, if 

4 


50 God’s White Throne. 


they take place by individuals in as many 
different places and from different causes. 
Death from accident seems worse than 
death from a lingering disease. And when 
our loved ones are taken from us our 
hearts are broken, though the death of a 
stranger is little more than a passing event. 

But aside from the extreme horror that 
we feel on account of circumstances attend- 
ing the calamities of the world, the fact 
still remains that all men are sufferers in 
some way or another, and none are exempt 
from that final separation that breaks all 
the ties that bind us to this world and to 
those we so much love. The whole prob- 
lem then reduced to its simplest form is 
this: Why should God so govern the world 
and so deal with men as to cause any one 
ever to suffer or die? The question is a 
reasonable one, but it can not be answered 
in a few words. 

Only two kinds of worlds are conceiv- 
able. One is the world that we have—a 


God Reigns. 51 


world of order and system, created and 
governed by a presiding Mind. The other 
is an impossible’ world that is created in 
the human imagination, a world all topsy- 
turvy, harum-searum. But if this were a 
topsy-turvy world: if to-day a given body 
weighed three or four times as much as it 
did yesterday, if we never could tell 
whether an unsupported body would fall 
to the ground or ascend into the air, if to- 
day the temperature should be one hundred 
degrees and to-morrow forty degrees below 
zero, if at one time a certain vegetable were 
food and at another time poison, if the nor- 
mal temperature of the human body varied 
with the changes in atmospheric temper- 
ature, if one day were ten hours long and 
another fifteen and another twenty-five, if 
seasons did not come and go in any fixed 
routine, if, in short, we could never be sure 
of anything, our lives and even our mental 
and moral powers would be overthrown. 
We therefore need and must have a world 


52 God’s White Throne. 


in which there is a fixed order and one 
upon which we can with confidence depend. 
Hence God acts uniformly in the world for 
our highest good. His ways of working 
are laws of life for us, though they may 
and often do occasion suffering and death. 
But if we stand across the path which his 
wisdom and goodness take in working out 
for us our highest good, the consequence 
should not be charged to the sovereign 
severity of God. 

It seems then both reasonable and right 
that a fixed and reliable order should be 
maintained in this world, and that immu- 
nity from suffering and death shouid not be 
expected either as a reward for great piety 
and devotion, or because of God’s compas- 
sicn toward human ignorance and weak- 
ness or childish innocence and mistakes. 

If we are to pass judgment on what God 
does with us and for us, we must keep in 
mind his evident purpose in all that he 
does. And if we should think there is a 


God Reigns. 53 


better way than his, we must test it also 
by the effect it would have upon us. 

If in our judgment only the wicked and 
vicious should suffer and the devout and 
virtuous be exempt, we should not forget 
that there are numberless degrees of char- 
acter in the descending scale from the best 
to the worst, and that each of us is judged 
in a different light by every other man. 
The same is true of the degree of strength 
and of knowledge that one may have. If, 
then, God should grant immunity from suf- 
fering according to the degree of merit that 
each man possesses, it is easy to see that 
the effect upon all would be confusing and 
demoralizing. There would be no estab- 
lished order in the course of nature, and 
nothing could be depended upon with the 
assurance of safety. Such would be the 
effect upon us of any way than that which 
is. God’s way is the best and only possible 


way. Any other would end in confusion 
and disaster to mental and moral life. 


54 God’s White Throne. 


God reigns. It is not impersonal, 
powerless natural laws, or blind, irrespon- 
sible natural forces that reign. Neither 
is it a demon or any number of demons 
who reign either absolutely or as God’s 
rivals. God alone reigns. The evils 
for which we hold some superior evil 
power responsible are not all such. The 
amount of evil that actually exists in the 
world varies with the larger or the more 
limited views that men take of the world 
and life and duty and God and destiny. 
The small soul who thinks and lives for 
himself alone, deals with the devil continu- 
ally, and sees his mischief in everything 
and everybody. He thinks of the devil 
more than he does of God, and sees God’s 
hand less in the affairs of men than he does 
the strong arm of a rival power. It is quite 
different with the man who is godlike, un- 
selfish, and devout. The devil is of little 
importance to him personally; he holds no 
important place in his ereed, and in no 


God Reigns. 5 


sense does he reign as God’s rival in the 
world. But he thinks of God, holds fellow- 
ship with him, and rejoices to recognize his 
reign over the whole earth, through his en- 
tire universe and from age to age, eter- — 
nally. The man who has the larger vision 
sees things more in God’s light and recog- 
nizes the beneficence of his government 
more fully. He does not make the common 
mistake of limiting God’s government to 
the physical world, and his purpose to the 
progress of the order of nature. He sees 
that the supreme purpose of God and the 
end toward which he is working in all 
things is a moral one. Viewing the world 
as moral, even in the physical realm, most 
of its mysteries that are of a moral nature 
are dissolved, and beneficence completely 
floods the mind’s horizon with its consola- 
tion and holy light. 

God reigns, and his throne is white. It 
is never, never usurped by an evil power 
or abdicated for his misuse. Upon it there 


56 God’s White Throne. 


is no stain of cruelty or injustice or un- 
kindness. No weakness or indifference or 
partiality is conceivable in his sovereignty. 
His scepter never trembles. In wisdom 
and righteousness and strength, boundless 
and everlasting, he reigns King of kings 
and Lord of lords. 


CHAPTER IV. 
Divine Purpose. 


It is not unreasonable to think that God 
governs this world chiefly in the interest of 
the moral or spiritual, rather than the phys- 
ical or natural order. It is reasonable to 
believe that he prizes virtue, holiness, love, 
intelligence, courage, freedom, and the like 
more highly than he does the character- 
istics of natural objects; that men who can 
think his thoughts after him, respond to the 
heart-throbs of eternal love and pity, and 
follow the devious path that leads through 
darkness upward to the light are by him 
esteemed more highly than mountains, 
though they be filled with treasures of 
gold; that nations are worth more to him 
than continents; and the moral universe 


than suns and systems without number. 
57 


58 God’s White Throne. 


Even in the realm of physical facts this 
is more a moral than it is a material world. 
Creation was a moral act of God bringing 
into existence an arena for the activities 
of moral beings, to whom life would be 
sweet and achievement a delight. The 
maintenance of the world is likewise a 
moral process with a moral end in view. 
In the realization of this end the one 
changeless fact is the moral purpose of 
God. This is as certainly unalterable as 
his moral nature. In the realization of his 
purpose he makes the natural order a 
means; and, while his purpose never varies, 
his method of working it out may and does 
change. As nature is only a method, so 
far as we can see, and not an end, there 
have been variations from a fixed order 
for the purpose of realizing higher ends 
than can be realized in a material system. 

Variations in the natural order are nec- 
essary for the accomplishment of God’s 
purpose, which is the perfection of moral 


Divine Purpose. 59 


beings and ultimately a moral world. But 
these variations are only exceptions in a 
fixed natural order, and not the order it- 
self. Both the variations and the estab- 
lished order are necessary for the develop- 
ment of a moral world and the fulfillment 
of God’s righteous will. 

The security of life, as well as the bal- 
ance of our reason and our moral nature, 
require stability in the order of the world. 
We are so closely bound to nature and so 
dependent upon it, that its course must be 
sufficiently regular and wholly reliable. 
Its laws must be, as they are, laws of life 
tous. But should there never be any vari- 
ation from a fixed, inflexible order in na- 
ture, the purpose of God in perfecting in 
us our higher, moral nature would be de- 
feated. The requirements of our bodies 
are so immediate, so imperative, and so 
numerous, that it is necessary for our good 
that there should be windows through the 
hard, dark wall of inexorable law and un- 


60 God’s Whute Throne. 


sympathizing nature to let in light from the 
spiritual world. For were it not for such 
hight from above we would think that na- 
ture is all, that we are of the earth our- 
selves, that our duty is to nature alone, and 
that when it affords no light we must walk 
in darkness, and when it gives no consola- 
tion we must in sorrow bow to our fate. 

It is therefore for our highest good that 
God does at times do things in a way dif- 
ferent from the ordinary course which we 
see in nature. These variations in his 
method of working are what we eall mir- 
acles. As an illustration, if we saw all the 
water in one of the great lakes suddenly 
rise from its basin in one vast volume and 
thus be lifted to the clouds, we should eall 
it the most impressive miracle the world 
has ever known. But the miraculousness 
of it would be in its variation from the or- 
dinary; for, in fact, that much water is 
raised to the clouds every day by the nat- 
ural method of evaporation. Were one 


Divine Purpose. 61 


way as common as the other, we should 
probably think the latter method of evap- 
oration the most remarkable and mysteri- 
ous, as it would be. The method which was 
the greatest break in the course of natural 
law, we should eall the miraculous. 

But with God there is no such thing as 
a miracle. That which is changeless is his 
moral purpose, and both the ordinary, 
which we call natural, and the extraordi- 
nary, which we call supernatural, are 
methods by which he works his beneficent 
will, and only methods. All the time he is 
acting on the high moral plane of directing 
the thoughts of men to himself, whom they 
should adoringly fear and lovingly obey 
for the good it will be to them. When he 
wishes to declare the authority of a prophet 
or an apostle as a messenger of truth to 
the world and to all ages, he does through 
him, or, in the presence of witnesses, does 
something himself, which shall stand out 
as a great historic fact. But should these 


62 God’s White Throne. 


wonders become common daily happenings, 
the purpose of God to awaken and perfect 
the moral natures of men would be de- 
feated as certainly as it would be if they 
never occurred at all. 

This truth sheds light on the dark prob- 
TIems of the world and life. We wonder 
why God does not more frequently inter- 
pose and avert disaster, dispel darkness, 
and relieve suffering. But, if any, why 
not all?) And if all, would his moral pur- 
pose be realized in us and in the world? 
If when the seas are swept by storms that 
imperil the lives of voyagers, every captain 
of an ocean liner were given power to stand 
on deck, and, stretching forth his hand, 
speak to the tempest, ‘‘ Peace, be still,’’ and 
it should obey him as the storm on Galilee 
obeyed the Master; if God should feed the 
famine-stricken districts of Asia with 
manna as he did the Israelites in the wil- 
derness; if in answer to prayer an ap- 
proaching cyclone should be turned back 


Dwine Purpose. 63 


or be lifted to spare a city, and then sweep 
on in its destructive course; if the pious 
and the innocent alone were made invulner- 
able to the thunderbolt; if at will any one, 
following his heart of sympathy, might 
open the eyes of the blind, cause the lame 
to walk, or raise sufferers from their sick- 
beds to comfort and health; if when our 
loved ones die we could take some sympa- 
thizing friend with us to where they lay 
who should be able with a word to call them 
forth and restore them to us alive, loving, 
and true; if by a word, a stroke of the 
hand, a prayer, or by gifts or sacrifices 
however costly we could realize all our 
fond desires for ourselves or for others, 
would the world be better off than it is? 
Surely not. Instead of order we shouid 
have confusion. Instead of a God whom 
we could trust, we should have one whom 
we could not regard. Instead of being im- 
pressed by the divine interposition, we 
should be as insensible and irreverent as 


64 God’s White Throne. 


rocks. Instead of God’s purpose being re- 
alized in us, it would end in failure. What 
we need is sufficient light shining into 
our dark abode to inspire us all with the 
sweeter, purer light of heaven, and that 
much is given. If we had more it would be 
no better to us than the shining of the sun 
or the pale, still hght of the moon. 

Again, since the happiness and hope of 
the world depend so much upon our having 
a full knowledge of great, fundamental 
truths, children that we are, we do not see 
why God does not use his authority in giv- 
ing to all the world a full-orbed knowledge 
of all that we need to know. If wisdom 
and goodness were not his attributes also, 
it would not be hard to see that by his al- 
mightiness he could give to all nations just 
such a revelation. He could make every 
cloud his Shekinah by day and by night. 
He could write his law in letters of fire 
upon the curtain of the sky. He could 
cause every thunderbolt to articulate his 


Divine Purpose. . 65 


righteous wrath against all iniquity. He 
could inscribe upon every leaf of forest and 
field his message of mercy to the meek and 
lowly of heart. He could make every 
gentle breeze whisper in our ears his fa- 
therly love for all his children. He could 
startle every sinner from his lethargy and 
stop him in his course of self-destruction 
by writing upon the wall of his house of 
feasting and debauchery and_ shame, 
‘“‘Thou art weighed in the balance and 
found wanting.’’ He could give to the 
waves that ever beat upon the sands and 
rocks of an endless shore the voice that tells 
of immortality, and cause the rolling ocean 
to respond with the solemn significance of 
eternity. He could raise up prophets and 
send them to all people and tongues, giving 
them as their divine credentials the power 
to do miracles and mighty works. The pos- 
sibilities of God’s almightiness to give to 
the whole world a perfect revelation cer- 
tainly are without limit. 
5 


66 God’s White Throne. 


But with such a revelation, full and uni- 
versal, would the world be any better off 
than it is? So it may seem to some. In- 
stead of having the many existing forms of 
false and conflicting religions, we should 
have had from the first the one true relig- 
ion, and the worship of the one and only 
true God. We never should have had the 
true religion rent by doctrinal controver- 
sies, as it has been. Holy wars, persecu- 
tions, inquisitorial tribunals, intolerance, 
strife, and enmity would have been un- 
known in history, because the light of di- 
vine truth had shone always everywhere. 
We should have been free from all modern 
religious fads and heresies. The age-long 
conflicts of science and religion, and of 
Christianity and free thought would have 
been impossible, because nature and reve- 
lation would have been manifestly har- 
monious and evidently of one origin, and 
that divine. Atheism would have been a 
thing unknown, for God’s existence would 


Divine Purpose. 67 


have been a self-evident fact to every mind 
and clear as a sunbeam. Agnosticism 
would have been equally impossible, for the 
knowledge of him and all fundamental 
truth would have been as certain as the 
consciousness of one’s own existence. 
There would have been no place for natu- 
ralism, because all effects in nature would 
have been directly traceable to the one 
great Cause of all things. Positivism 
never would have had a name, for knowl- 
edge would have been so direct that the 
truth would not have been a tax either on 
one’s logic in proving it, or on one’s faith 
in believing it. Our origin, duty, and des- 
tiny would have been so revealed that there 
could have remained no room for doubt or 
misgiving or fear or despair. But such a 
revelation as this God has not given. And 
yet the wish that it had been made is im- 
plied in all our childish impatience with 
Providence. 


68 God’s White Throne. 


The desire that we have to know the 
mysteries of the world and to have the 
highest good realized in all men is a divine 
trait in us, instead of a reflection upon our 
great heartedness and love of humanity. 
But how utterly fatal to the divine purpose 
for the world would our wishes be, were 
they substituted for the method which God 
pursues in the world! | 

Should the extraordinary become con- 
tinuous, should the supernatural become 
common, it would be no more impressive 
than nature alone would be. In fact, the 
natural and the supernatural would be to 
us identical. If the revelation were made 
as universal and inflexible as nature, the 
world would be reduced to an order in 
which there would, after all, be no super- 
natural element. And if, on the other 
hand, the revelation were universal, but 
subject to no order or system, we should 
have a world of disorder which would 
wreck all reason as well as faith. In either 


Divine Purpose. 69 


case the divine purpose to awaken and de- 
velop the moral life of the world by im- 
pressions from the spiritual world would 
fail. 

Another fact must not be overlooked. 
Man is not a mechanism. He does not re- 
ceive truth passively, then give it forth in 
the form of character and influence, as the 
water receives the sunlight, then reflects ‘t 
back toward its source. However, there is 
something more the matter with the world 
than the need of greater knowledge, unless 
it be that knowledge which is equivalent to 
wisdom, in which there is a due regard for 
moral excellence. Hence, were it morally 
possible for God to give to all mankind a 
clear revelation of himself, a full knowl- 
edge of their divine obligations, a definite 
code of social ethics and standards of na- 
tional and world righteousness, there 
would still be lacking the necessary moral 
impulse and love of true godliness to raise 
the truth thus revealed into the living form 


70 God’s White Throne. 


of personal excellence. Infinite wisdom 
has given tc the world all the light it has 
needed. Not all the light that perfect 
knowledge calls for, but all that perfect 
moral development requires, and this is 
God’s purpose concerning us, and our su- 
preme need. 

A revelation, even though it were as 
universal as nature itself, would therefore 
not take out of the world its cruelty and 
crime, its intolerance and ignorance, its 
doubt and despair. The spread of Gospel 
light in the Christian nations did not put 
an end to wars and persecutions and intol- 
erance. It did not settle the controversies 
of creeds and put an end to all heresy. The 
world was morally wrong, and when the 
right goes forth in a world of wrong there 
will be war and suffering until righteous- 
ness, which has the right of way, is tri- 
umphant everywhere. Contradictory as it 
may seem, the Prince of Peace came not 
to bring peace on earth, but a sword. But 


Dwine Purpose. 71 


peace will come to earth when good-will to 
men becomes a universal practice in the 
world. That is, when the moral purpose of 
God is realized. 

Disbelief has ever been due to dispo- 
sition, far more than to the need of greater 
light. Men are atheists, agnostics, mate- 
rialists, anything and everything in Chris- 
tian lands, with open Bible in hand and 
with evidences on every side of God’s pres- 
ence and power in the world. 

The cure of disbelief and doubt, and 
their consequent suffering and despair, is 
an honest attitude of will and affection 
toward the truth that God has given, and 
toward himself as the infinite power in the 
world who works for righteousness. 

Nor has God shown favoritism, in that 
he has withheld the higher forms of reve- 
laticn from some nations and given it to 
others, and in making it more clear in these 
Christian centuries than he did in the morn- 
ing centuries of history. Excessive light 


72 God’s White Throne. 


would have been blinding rather than il- 
luminating to ages and nations in great 
darkness. The moral life of the world, the 
same as of the individual, is a development. 
As the moral life unfolds, the apprehension 
of the truth revealed becomes more clear. 
Then the higher and more spiritual forms 
of revelation are imparted. The form and 
the degree that the revelation takes are al- 
ways justified by the end that God hag in 
view for the world and the capacity of the 
world at any given time to understand 
what he would make known to it. But if 
all the world has not and never did have 
the sacred Scriptures, this does not mean 
that any part of the world has ever been 
abandoned by God to utter darkness and 
hopelessness. The fact that in every age 
all nations have had some form of religious 
worship, though it may be most degrading 
homage paid to incarnations of passion 
and vice, and the fact also that these na- 
tions have ever felt after God, if happily 


Dwine Purpose. 73 


they might find him, is reasonable evidence 
that his Spirit has ever been in the world 
brooding over this human chaos for the 
purpose of perfecting its moral life. 

Again, where much is given to any peo- 
ple, from them much is required. Devel- 
oped moral life is truth in personal form, 
and when any people under the care of God 
have had their moral life so unfolded as to 
embody in their national and social and in- 
dustrial and personal life the high stand- 
ards of God’s revealed truth, he holds them 
responsible for the greater enlightenment 
of uncivilized nations. Thus it is that, 
through people in whom his purpose is at 
least partly realized, and not by rocks and 
winds and trees and inscriptions on the sky 
or anything wholly of the impersonal order, 
does he make known his will to benighted 
peoples. 

By this method, as by no other, is the 
feeling of responsibility and sympathy and 
sacrifice upon the part of the strong toward 


74. God’s White Throne. 


the weak enlarged, and the sense of grati- 
tude and love and confidence in the weak 
toward the strong developed, both of which 
are essential to and largely constitute the 
moral life of the world as it is purposed by 
God. Without the inequality of nations the 
divine attributes of international sympathy 
and sacrifice, fraternity and philanthrophy 
would have no incentive. The same is true 
for all Christian communions, as well as 
for every individual who has a truth which 
would be a benefit for others to know. 
And so beneficent is God’s method of 
revelation, that it is not the one who re- 
ceives that is most blest. Every act of sac- 
rifice or suffering for others has its reflex 
effect upon the doer of it, so that he also is 
lifted into richer experience and clearer 
light. How true is the saying of the master 
Teacher, ‘‘He that would save his life shall 
lose it, and he that would lose his life shall 
keep it.’’ It applies to nations, to Chris- 
tian communions, and to all individuals, 


Divine Purpose. (ai 


and its truth is verified with never an ex- 
ception. 

Defective as God’s method of revela- 
tion may seem to some, it is nevertheless in- 
finitely wise and good, and the only pos- 
sible one for a world that has a moral life 
to unfold. The world’s darkness is dissolv- 
ing slowly, too slowly for our impatience. 
But if men are morally responsible, they 
are to have a part in their own develop- 
ment, and upon this fact hangs the age-long 
delay in the world’s march to its divinely- 
appointed goal. God’s purpose is holy. 
This he changes not; but both the natural 
and the supernatural orders are his vari- 
able methods, and as such, are both sub- 
servient to the changeless law of his moral 
purpose, which is the one absolute, eternal 
order. 

Subject to this higher order is also the 
balance between the natural and the super- 
natural methods. When the moral good of 
the world calls for it, the natural order 


76 God’s White Throne. 


may be broken more frequently by mani- 
festations of God in the supernatural form. 
Upon the other hand, should the good of 
the world require it, the natural may re- 
main even more fixed and the supernatural 
become less frequent. If, as seems to have 
been the case, there have been ages in 
which the supernatural in the form of mir- 
acle and prophecy was more frequent than 
at present, it is because the moral life of 
the world, the faith of men in God, and the 
co-operation of men with God have become 
so established that the methods of revela- 
tion in former centuries are no longer 
needed as they then were. For more mi- 
raculous than miracle and more prophetic 
than prophecy is the life of God in men. 
The truth then becomes personal and in- 
carnate, and these sons of God are the epis- 
tles that are read and known of men with 
more fruitful results. Better and far more 
convincing of the truth of God than multi- 
plied miracles are multitudes of men who 
are morally great, and in their hearts of 


Divine Purpose. ae 


sympathy and works of merey embrace all 
men the world over. 

These facts of miracle and prophecy 
as methods of God in working out his holy 
will in the world point to another fact 
which is infinitely more significant than 
any other for the world’s hope and happi- 
ness; namely, the incarnation of the Son of 
God. Here is the miracle that is greater 
than all other miracles, for he is the most 
unaccountable fact in all history from the 
standpoint of one who would account for 
him as he may account for other men. For 
other men, no matter how high they may 
rise above their age, can be accounted for 
by antecedent forces and surrounding in- 
fluences. They may be great enough to be 
called remarkable men, and go down as his- 
toric characters. But Christ can not be ac- 
counted for as other men are. For, while 
he rose infinitely above his own age and 
could not have been the product of a race 
of antecedents, he is so superior to other 
men that he rises far above any who have 


%8 God’s Wiite Throne. 


appeared in the world since his time. So 
pure, so universal, so great is he, that he is 
the human type for all ages and nations, 
and the prophecy in person of the perfected 
purpose of God for humanity. He is a 
complete break in the series of natural 
causes. He appears in the world through 
the veil of nature; still he is not of natural 
origin. So far superior is he to nature, 
that it yields to his word and touch as 
though it recognized in him its rightful 
Lord. 

Christ is the most unaccountable his- 
toric fact known to men. He has arrested 
the thought of the world and captivated its 
heart more effectually than all other facts. 
He is a miracle even in the sphere of the 
miraculous, a supernatural fact in the 
course of supernatural events. His mis- 
sion to the world was to reveal not only 
God to men, but to reveal men to them- 
selves, and to point all men to what they 
are capable of being by God’s purpose con- 
cerning them becoming realized. 


Divine Purpose. 79 


The Incarnation is therefore not an end 
in itself, but is the supreme act of God in 
his method of working out his will in men 
and the world. Of all facts that rise above 
nature into the class of the supernatural, 
the most impressive is the presence of the 
Son of God in the world, partaking of hu- 
man flesh and blood, but living a life, re- 
vealing a character, setting in motion 
moral forces, and teaching truths funda- 
mental for all ages and nations. He came 
into the world in the fullness of time, when 
the world was ready for him, and he went 
out of the world when he did, because he 
knew it was expedient for him to go. One 
Christ is all that the world has had, and all 
that it ever shall need. Upon him, through 
the Spirit’s universal influence, the minds 
of men will ever be fixed, and the better he 
is known and trusted, the more will the 
wrongs of the world be righted, the hearts 
of men be purified, and their lives glorified. 
Never will his moral magnetism diminish 
or his light grow dim. 


80 God’s White Throne. 


Christ came into the world to do the 
will of his Father who sent him, and, hav- 
ing finished the work that he gave him to 
do, he disappeared from the sight of men, 
that through the Spirit he might become 
a universal Christ and remain with us al- 
ways, even unto the end of the world. 

What shall we say then? Are not God’s 
thoughts and ways as high as the heavens 
above our thoughts and our ways? His 
purpose is infinitely wise and good, and his 
method of working it out through miracle, 
prophecy, the Incarnation, the Spirit’s 1n- 
spiration, and providence is likewise di- 
vinely beneficent. 

Darkness is not all dissolved, suffering 
is not all alleviated, tears are not all wiped 
away, wrong is not all righted, his ways 
are not all known; but the moral world is 
only in the formative period yet. The per- 
fect has not yet been realized. But it is 
God’s plan that it shall be. Through all 
the variations that come in the course of 


Dwine Purpose. 81 


history and the process of nature, as well 
as in the more permanent order, where, 
as a rule, events come to pass according to 
fixed law, the one factor universal and eter- 
nal is God’s moral law. From it there is 
never a shadow of turning. It is his un- 
alterable method of achieving his final pur- 
pose in the world. 

There is divine moral purpose in every 
event, every fact, every experience, every- 
thing. The patient, truth-seeking soul will 
try to trace this purpose in all the onward 
movements of the world. He will not 
hastily conclude from this or that fact what 
that purpose is, much less will he doubt 
such a purpose because of mystery or ca- 
lamity or suffering. If he can not under- 
stand, he nevertheless will believe that God 
is good and wise, and to him this is better 
than sight; it is the substance of the things 
for which he hopes, the evidence of things 
which otherwise can not be known. 

6 


CHAPTER V. 
THe RAce Unper DISCIPLINE. 


Tur wretchedness of the race through 
all the centuries of its slow progress to its 
present state of peace, enlightenment, and 
righteousness has caused many to doubt 
even a race providence, not to mention a 
divine care for the individual. 

It must be confessed that the history of 
the world is a sad, dark story viewed in the 
light of the physical and moral misery 
which the race has borne in its desperate, 
blind struggle toward civilization. But 
there is no ground for indicting God as the 
cause of it. His reign over the earth and 
in all human affairs has ever been benefi- 
cent, wise, and just. His throne has been 
stainless and white. If the race, like a cur- 
rent of water, flowed on in a prescribed 

82 


The Race Under Discipline. 83 


course guided by external forces which 
were sufficient to explain all its movements 
and varied conditions, then there might be 
some possible ground for charging the 
world’s woes to faults and failures in God’s 
government; he could have made human 
existence brighter and better, but did not. 
But if man was to be what he is, and not 
something so passive, impressionless, and 
irresponsible as to be a different order of 
being altogether, then no course of provi- 
dence is conceivable which would have has- 
tened the race with greater speed and cer- 
tainty toward its appointed goal. 

Man was made for action and achieve- 
ment, and the earth an arena for his valor. 
If, then, the race has found the world to 
contain more mystery than plain truth, it 
does not follow that God is jealous of 
knowledge in his creatures. If there were 
given to man heavy burdens to bear, and a 
long, hard journey to travel over an un- 
known and devious path, this does not mean 


84 God’s White Throne. 


that existence begins and ends with toil, 
or that there is no compensation at last for 
his weariness and burden-bearing. And if 
there has been bleeding and suffering in all 
ages, the conclusion is not that the God 
who is over all and blessed forever is a dis- 
interested observer of all this terrible 
strife, or that he looks upon the agony of 
the world with no heart of pity and no 
hand of help. 

We are to think of the race which is, 
and not an imaginary one; a race which, 
though very imperfect, is capable, through 
discipline, of development to a state of per- 
fection which far transcends our utmost 
present conception; and for such a purpose 
this is the best possible world, and God’s 
method of instruction and discipline is the 
best, no doubt, that infinite wisdom and 
goodness could devise; certainly better 
than human ingenuity could plan. 

It is quite true that for aught we know 
the material world and the course of nature 


The Race Under Discipline. 85 


may serve even a higher purpose than 
being a field for human valor and achieve- 
ment. We do not know what significance 
it may have for the Creator himself, be- 
yond the purpose it may serve the human 
race. It may possibly be of more service 
to man after he has passed beyond the 
shadows of earth and time and joined the 
innumerable company of immortals, than 
it was while he made it his home and school 
for mental and moral discipline. For the 
material universe certainly contains mys- 
teries deep enough and numerous to tax 
the minds of loftier spirits and more divine 
than can be attributed to human souls in 
this world, however perfect they may be in 
mental grasp and spiritual insight, and it 
may serve such beings as its chief end. 
But such ideas can be only conjectural. 
We are not in a position to see that nature 
serves any purpose higher than being an 
arena for man’s discipline and develop- 
ment while he is living in this world. 


86  God’s White Throne. 


And it certainly has served this pur- 
pose well. For, whichever view one may 
hold as to man’s primitive state, whether 
that of a high degree of intelligence, clear 
understanding of social rights and duties, 
lofty ideals, pure morals, spiritual percep- 
tion, or that of an undeveloped savage; 
whether he be regarded as allied to his 
Creator or to the beast of the field, we cer- 
tainly find that, from the beginning of re- 
liable history to the present, there has been 
a race progress upward and away from the 
selfish and the animal toward the social 
and the moral life. The world was new 
and the race was young, just the kind of a 
world that the young race needed. There 
were unsailed seas, unexplored continents, 
undiscovered resources, unknown laws, un- 
seen forces, undeveloped principles, and 
unclassified facts. The task of turning the 
desert world into a thing of service and 
beauty was given to man. But had his 
wants all been so well supplied as to re- 


The Race Under Discipline. 87 


quire no effort upon his part to obtain 
them; had he from the beginning been 
made free from drudgery and disease and 
suffering and death; had the world been a 
thing so small and so simple as to call 
forth no activity and require no courage; 
had he been made so perfect in his mental 
and moral nature as to find no mysteries 
in the world to master, no secrets to solve, 
and no trials to test him; had his social 
nature been fully developed so that each 
man knew and owned every other man as 
his brother and felt himself to be his 
keeper; had he freely acquiesced in gov- 
ernments and laws and language and sci- 
ence and philosophy and religion and all 
forms of truth given to him perfected by 
God at the beginning; had his own nature 
been fully developed and he able fully to 
understand the world of mystery that is in 
his own soul, what would have been the 
result? Evidently this: The race would 


88 God’s White Throne. 


have died in infancy, and the earth would 
have remained a waste place unto this day. 

It is not hard to recognize a race provi- 
dence, while we think only of the agreeable 
things and the visible hand of God in the 
world. We can all easily believe and be 
optimistic in our faith while we look only 
on the bright side of the world’s life. It 
is when the darkness overtakes us that we 
are seized with despair and doubt. It is 
when we reflect upon the groveling, grop- 
ing, wretchedness, and helplessness of the 
race and of ‘‘man’s inhumanity to man’’ 
that we wonder where God is and what in- 
terest he has in the world’s happiness and 
progress. There is a ‘‘soul of goodness 
in things evil,’’ but it is not always mani- 
fest, and when for the want of a true faith 
and a clear spiritual insight we are unable 
to see it, we seize upon the ‘‘things evil,’’ 
and then our sense of what is right and 
just leads us to question a beneficence in 
the world-order. Nevertheless there is a 


The Race Under Discipline. 89 


world-providence even in the things which 
seem to be incompatible with a beneficent 
and faultless moral government among 
men. 

The physical features of the earth show 
plainly that God intended it, not as a pleas- 
ure ground for men, but as a place of disci- 
pline. Some men are so extremely utili- 
tarian that they can see no good reason 
why such a large part of the earth’s sur- 
face should be composed of vast regions 
of snow and ice, broad ocean wastes, storm- 
swept, dreary deserts, and rock-ribbed 
mountains. But these have been the natu- 
ral boundaries and bulwarks for the na- 
tions through all the centuries. For this 
reason they have served a beneficent pur- 
pose in protecting the race from its own 
suicidal hand. For, had it not been for 
these natural barriers which made the 
transportation or march of armies from 
one country to another difficult, if not in 
many instances impossible, those nations 


90 God’s White Throne. 


which have given to the world the richest 
treasures of art, language, culture, and 
religion, and some of the highest ideals of 
national and domestic life, would have been 
exterminated in their infancy. Moreover, 
it seems that God kept the richest con- 
tinents a secret from the race by these vast 
wastes of water and sand and ice, and re- 
served them until he had trained peoples 
who were courageous and worthy enough 
to go over and possess them, and there 
raise the ensign of freedom and protection 
for the downtrodden multitudes of earth. 
To some it may seem that fertile plains, 
stately forests, rivers of oil, mountains of 
minerals, and hills of granite and marble 
would have served the world far better 
than these vast uninhabitable and unpro- 
ductive areas. But such a view is too nar- 
row to commend itself to the thoughtful. 
God has abundantly provided the race with 
all these things, and they serve, as far as 
they are capable of serving, the purpose of 


The Race Under Discipline. 91 


God in training the race in righteousness 
and helping it to a happy existence. 

But it is not in great riches and re- 
sources that any age or people is strong 
and great. The world’s richest treasures 
are its moral and intellectual fiber and 
productiveness. If then these vast wastes 
have served the purpose of protecting the 
race from self-destruction; if in surmount- 
ing them it has been trained in character 
and courage; if they have created brain 
and brawn; if they have fostered freedom 
and faith; if the cities built by the seas 
have been beautified with the highest arts 
and the noblest architecture; if in these 
cities have been founded the schools in 
which the world’s masters have developed 
and taught the systems of truth which have 
been the inspiration and the light of the 
ages; if conquering commerce and political 
greatness have followed the circle of the 
seas; if the greatest achievements in struc- 
tural engineering have been the products 


92 God’s White Throne. 


of nations hemmed in by natural barriers; 
if all this wealth has become the world’s 
possession on account of the inspiration, 
protection, influence, and discipline of des- 
erts and mountains and seas and zones of 
snow and ice, then who can say that the 
race has not been better cared for than it 
would have been with infinite resources of 
material wealth and physical comfort? 
Those who are unable to see that the 
barrenness of so large a part of the earth’s 
surface can serve any good end for the 
race, should remember that all those little 
imperial powers of thought and energy and 
faith, such as Palestine, Greece, Italy, Hol- 
land, Great Britain, and New England, 
where the world’s heart has throbbed deep- 
est, and the stream of divine life hag flowed 
fastest and fullest, have been situated 
where lofty mountains, broad deserts, or 
rolling, restless seas have awakened 
thoughts of the infinite and have created 
courage in the race’s struggle for exist- 


The Race Under Discipline. 93 


ence. From this point ef view they will see 
less occasion of finding fault with God’s 
government and more clearly recognize his 
moral purpose in the training of the race. 

Again, we are just beginning to see how 
exhaustless are the physical forces and ma- 
terial resources of the world, and the uses 
which they serve in uniting all people in 
ties of intelligence and fraternity, in lift- 
ing burdens from the backs of men and 
beasts, and in multiplying the comforts and 
unfolding the moral life of mankind. We 
are just in the early dawn of the last day 
of creation, the Sabbath of the world’s rest. 
The forces and the resources of nature, 
which God garnered up ages upon ages ago 
for the future service and comfort of the 
race, are just beginning to relieve the 
weariness of toiling hands and tired feet. 
Relieved of many of their heavy physical 
burdens, men are beginning to have 
strength and time for other and higher 
tasks. They may now give attention to the 


94. God’s White Throne. 


culture of mind and heart. They may de- 
velop their ethical and social lives and add 
to their domestic and religious joys. 
Nature is certainly a rich storehouse 
of treasures and forces and laws for the 
benefit of the race, but why were its doors 
for so many ages shut and its contents kept 
a profound secret? Why should man have 
to till the soil with a stick or stone until a 
few generations ago, while the very dirt 
in which he dug contained iron for imple- 
ments that would have made his toil lighter 
and his harvest more abundant? Why was 
he so long ignorant of the use of coal to 
drive the wheels of commerce and manu- 
facturing, and these great world industries 
be so long retarded on account of it? Why 
was the use of steam, one of the mightiest 
forces in nature, a thing unknown to the 
race until recently, though its presence in 
the world has for ages been a matter of 
common knowledge? [Electricity has ever 
offered its services to lift the burdens from 


The Race Under Discipline. 95 


man and beast and bless the world with its 
language and light, but strangely enough 
the ages have stupidly feared its voice and 
known not its good-will. And why should 
disease and suffering ravage the race so 
long, while remedies for the relief of so 
many human ills abounded everywhere? 
The blessings of providence that have 
been stored up in this old time-worn earth 
and have long waited and still wait the 
world’s service are numberless. But why 
was not the race made aware of the use of 
all these elements and powers that enter 
into the arts and sciences of civilized life 
long ages ago? Why did not the Hand that 
placed them here disclose their secret and 
put them to the service of a suffering, help- 
less world in its childhood? And if a bet- 
ter day is coming on, a day of universal 
sympathy and comfort and peace and 
brotherhood, because of a better knowledge 
of what God has done to bless mankind, 
why must millions still suffer and toil on 


96 God’s White Throne. 


and die while the world continues to grope 
for greater light? 

Such questions can reasonably be 
raised only as we imagine the earth to be 
filled with a race of beings other than men, 
or think of God as dealing so arbitrarily 
with men as utterly to ignore what they 
really are and treating them as though 
they were things instead. If the race were 
composed of beings who could have no ap- 
preciation of providence, no sense of duty, 
no choice of right, no fear of penalty, no 
sense of responsibility, no aspiration for 
goodness, no power of reason, who, in 
short, are wholly incapable of development, 
then there would be some justification for 
finding fault with God’s way of dealing 
with them. But such creatures would not 
be men. 

Upon the other hand, if God could take 
men as they are and exalt them by his al- 
mighty power to such a state of perfection 
as would make them insensible to suffering, 


The Race Under Discipline. 97 


and give them a clear knowledge of all 
facts and laws and duties and perfect their 
moral and social natures and give them 
composure of heart and rest of faith in his 
good providence and submission to his 
wholesome discipline, but did not do so, 
then we might again complain justly that 
he was not doing his best to improve the 
condition of his dependent children. But 
such a thing would be an impossibility even 
with almighty God. For, should he thus 
raise man arbitrarily to such a state of ex- 
altation he would be destroying man and 
making a being of another order. 3 
It is the race of beings which we call 
men that God is dealing with and disci- 
plining, and for it he is working wisely, 
as best he can, to bring it to its appointed 
beneficent goal. The Spirit of God has 
ever brooded over the chaos of humanity, 
bringing light out of darkness, order out 
of confusion, good out of evil, and happi- 
ness out of sorrow and suffering; and he 
7 


98 God’s White Throne. 


will continue to co-operate with the strug- 
gling race as it strives to rise until his 
moral purpose for the world is fully re- 
alized. But in his guardianship over the 
world God has followed the course of disci- 
pline that has developed the race symmet- 
rically. For it is with the race as it is with 
the individual; the method of instruction 
followed must recognize the capacity to re- 
ceive and use the gifts of God, and the 
stages of instruction must progress from 
the lower to the higher. 

Now, the goal of the world is a moral 
one, and the movement of the race as 
a whole has ever been toward that end. 
But such is the character of undevel- 
oped humanity that it would have been 
fatal to have put it in possession of the 
wealth and forces and privileges of modern 
civilization before men and nations became 
sufficiently rational and moral to use them 
judiciously. Had barbarous ages been put 
in possession of modern means of trans- 


The Race Under Discipline. 99 


portation and modern instruments of war- 
fare, had they known the chemistry of ex- 
plosives and the varied uses of electricity, 
had they been familiar with the geography 
of the earth and the languages of hostile 
tribes, the slaughter of savage and semi- 
civilized nations would have been well-nigh 
complete, and the world’s progress would 
have been retarded. There would have 
been vastly more suffering than there has 
been from the plan and the program of 
providence for the world. 

No good has God ever denied the world 
when the fullness of time had come for 
the world to receive and enjoy it; for no 
blessing, however great, is ever fit for 
man’s use until man is fit to use it. The 
knowledge of great truths, the use of great 
forces, the service of great riches, all come 
in the course of human progress and con- 
stitute progress, though strangely enough 
about every great discovery or idea or re- 
form has had its crucified lord. Who then 


100 God’s White Throne. 


ean justify any objection to the way God 
has withheld from former ages any of the 
blessings which this age of civilization en- 
joys? 

Another thing which looks like divine 
indifference concerning the good of the 
race, is the small degree of knowledge 
which the present age possesses of the peo- 
ple and civilization of the early centuries 
of the world’s history. If each age is right- 
ful heir to all the good of the ages that 
went before it, why did not the great 
Teacher and Benefactor of the world pre- 
serve for coming generations all the arts 
and literature and laws and customs and 
religious light of the pioneer peoples of the 
world that are now dead and forgotten? 
Why have they not signified more for the 
world of to-day? Did God care so little 
for the latter ages as not to preserve for 
them the early records of the race, or did 
he consider the achievements of the ages 
of oblivion to be of so little consequence 


The Race Under Discipline. 101 


for the future? By excavating the buried 
ruins of ancient cities, desecrating the 
tombs of dead nations, deciphering hiero- 
glyphies, translating scraps of time-worn 
parchment, crediting truth to the tradi- 
tions and legends and myths that have been 
handed down from generation to gener- 
ation, digging up old coins and broken col- 
umns, and making all that we can of every 
chance discovery that bears the marks of 
antiquity, we have found that the nations 
now lost to reliable history are by no means 
to be despised for what they achieved. 
But even if what they did achieve sig- 
nified but little in comparison with the 
marvels of the present century, it is of in- 
terest to us that we know something more 
definite than we do of the first scenes and 
actors of the age-long drama of man. It 
seems right, too, that we should know who 
our early benefactors were, that we may 
better revere their memory. But they are 
dead, and what they did is buried with 


102 God’s White Throne. 


them. Why has God so dealt with the 
race? ‘The only true answer is that he has 
done so for the training and perfecting of 
a race of intelligent moral beings. 

In the first place, truth is not of human 
origin. All truth is eternal, and when it 
becomes a matter of human knowledge it 
is either from discovery or revelation, or 
both; and when it becomes known, it re- 
mains forever the world’s possession. It 
may be handed down from age to age and 
pass from nation to nation, and in its 
course take on new forms, but the sub- 
stance of it never dies or disappears from 
the world. It is ever appearing and reap- 
pearing in a new light, and often in such 
a changed appearance as to be identified 
with difficulty. And yet it is the same time- 
honored truth. In his education of the 
race God does not burden men with non- 
essentials, the minor details and forms of 
truth, but inspires them with the essentials, 
the fundamentals, the living realities. 


The Race Under Discipline. 108 


Truth has life, and whatever the ancient 
world may have known of it still lives. It 
survives customs, language, literature, re- 
ligion, caste, tribal characteristics, storms 
of revolution, and the death of nations. It 
is heaven-born, and in an upper current 
passes along from age to age. 

It is not possible for us to analyze the 
infinitely complex stream of truth that 
courses through and constitutes our pres- 
ent civilization. No man is able to tell 
when and by whom one-thousandth part of 
the truth which he may know came to be 
the world’s possession. That is a matter 
of little consequence to him. To know that 
he knows it, without knowing its history, is 
enough. Much less is it possible to trace 
all the world’s truth back to where it was 
born from above. This is not necessary 
for our happiness and progress. For this 
reason God has buried the dead past, but 
given a resurrection unto life of the soul 


104. God’s White Throne. 


of ancient civilization and culture, and the 
soul of it is our heritage to-day. 
Comparatively little has God given to 
man ready for his use and easy of access, 
but he has done for him what is infinitely 
more for his good. He has placed him in a 
world where facts are sown broadcast, 
where forces clash, where struggle for ex- 
istence is the law of life, where truth is 
but partly revealed, where only the still 
small voice of the Creator is heard, where 
all conceivable mysteries about the past 
and all degrees of uncertainty about the 
future exist, where want and grief and suf- 
fering and death abound, where everything 
is changing and transitory, where all con- 
ceivable forms of religion and caste and 
superstition abound along with race preju- 
dice and varied degrees of national moral- 
ity and enlightenment. He has placed him 
in this kind of a world for a good and wise 
purpose, and that purpose has been in pro- 
cess of realization through all the ages. 


The Race Under Discipline. 105 


These are the things that have awakened 
the curiosity of mankind, invited investi- 
gation, challenged endeavor, tested endur- 
ance, developed brawn and brain, humbled 
pride, purified life, established faith, culti- 
vated philanthropy, and united the race 
ever more in the firmer bonds of peace and 
good-will. 

It is not luxury and laxity of discipline 
that have advanced the race. It is the ob- 
stacles in the way of progress and life and 
happiness that defy, and for the most part 
defeat, that have disciplined the race and 
have made man the master that he is. 

Governments, laws, industrial society, 
social life, international comity, the home, 
the family, the school, the Church, and all 
the institutions of Christian civilization ex- 
ist to bless mankind, because both the ne- 
cessity of them and the desire for them 
were implanted in human nature, and be- 
cause God has ever worked in the race, 
both to will and to do of his good pleasure. 


106 God’s White Throne. 


It does not look as though the entire course 
of history has been forward. It does not 
look as though the race as a whole has al- 
Ways aspired to the will of God. It does 
not look as though the inspiration of the 
Almighty has always given to man an un- 
derstanding. Nor does it look as though 1 
the chastening hand of God has always had 
the effect of correcting the wrongs of the 
world, and showing man the way to light 
and peace. 

And since the world’s salvation is being 
worked out by the human and the divine 
in co-operation, the human element makes 
it very certain that what God has willed 
concerning man has not always been the 
thing realized. Human intervention has 
often modified the beneficent end of God’s 
providence and training of the race; but it 
is impossible to tell to what extent this is 
true, because only the mind of the Infinite 
knows how unsearchable are the judgments 
of the Lord and how past finding out are 


The Race Under Discipline. 107 


all his ways. Only he knows how much at 
one time and how little at other times the 
race has followed its own evil course. It 
appears that at times God has held in his 
hand absolutely the destiny of the race, 
and that at other times he has permitted 
it to become sick of its iniquity, alarmed 
at its own condition, penitent of its sins, 
worn and weary of its self-inflicted wretch- 
edness, its self-imposed burdens, and its 
self-benighted state. But thus is God gov- 
erning the world in the interest of men; 
and no word is needed to show that the race 
has made progress under his discipline. 
The end is not yet. Nor is it in the near 
future. True it is that war is not the 
world’s chief vocation, as it once was. Na- 
tions are no longer bent on each other’s 
destruction. Freedom’s holy lght is 
streaming into the dark recesses of the 
earth. Nymphs and hobgoblins have been 
driven from forests and meadows and 
waters. Reason is routing superstition; 


108 God’s White Throne. 


and religion, united with morality, is reign- 
ing more and more in the consciences of 
the nations. The laws of God are becom- 
ing the laws of the people. Brotherhood is 
binding together the ends of the earth. 
Philosophy and science and industry and 
literature and laws and civil government 
and social, state, and Church institutions 
are becoming allied with the truth of reve- 
lation, and the giant men of the great na- 
tions of earth are owning the Christ as 
Master and Lord. 

But the will of God is not yet done 
in earth as it is done in heaven. There 
have been wars,. revolutions, persecutions, 
black atrocities, foul injustice, enervat- 
ing wealth, luxury, and laxity in morals, 
and history is likely to repeat itself. 
The world is entering upon an age of 
Christian enlightenment. The righteous- 
ness of almighty God has the right of 
way in the earth, but as it goes forth in a 
world of wrong its rights are sure to be 


The Race Under Discipline. 109 


disputed. The Prince of Peace has come, 
but until earth is purged of evil and error 
his coming is to bring to the race not the 
peace of compromise, but the sword of con- 
flict. 

With the waking of the Walled Kingdom 
which has slept for forty centuries there 
is coming to its teeming millions of people 
the realization of their peril and their 
power. They see dangers that threaten to 
dismember their kingdom, destroy their 
ancient shrines, desecrate the tombs of 
their sacred ancestors, set at naught their 
age-long customs, controvert their forms 
of faith, and disregard their ways of wor- 
ship. China does not yet know her latent 
power and her large resources, but when 
she is wholly awake to her situation and 
her strength she will be something more 
than a field of strife between foreign 
powers; she will resist all invasion with 
millions of arms. 

But the eyes of the world are on the 


110 God’s White Throne. 


Kast. The EHastern Question, in which the 
interests of the nations of the earth, as well 
as the religions of all mankind, are in- 
volved, is the greatest that has ever come 
to the race as a whole for solution. It is 
to be hoped that it will be settled peace- 
ably and justly, but that is too much to 
expect. It is more probable that its his- 
tory when written will be one of the most 
terrible chapters in the annals of the world. 
Nations in which Christianity has given 
tone to diplomacy and temper to meth- 
ods of warfare may do much to mitigate 
the avarice and atrocity of the conflict, but 
more than half the world know nothing of 
Christian ideals, and most of the other half 
regard them from policy more than from 
principle. 

But the conflict seems inevitable, even 
necessary. It is one of God’s ways of disci- 
plining the race and teaching it wisdom. 
It gives himself greater authority in the 
affairs of nations and affords his truth an 


The Race Under Discipline. 111 


opening for recognition. It forces nations 
to face each other with the best that they 
have of everything, moral, social, indus- 
trial, civil, and religious, and the Lord God 
of Hosts, who is over every battlefield, 
above each monarch’s throne, in every 
council of peace, causes his truth to tri- 
umph, his name to be known. 

Day is just dawning on the Dark Conti- 
nent. A rim of light circles its horizon 
with a promise of the morning. Heralds of 
the Cross have brought the light that shail 
brighten ever until its age-long night is 
turned to eternal day. But what shall be 
the history of its civilization? So situated 
geographically as to be equally accessible 
to the nations of America, Hurope, and 
Asia, Africa is destined to be the field of 
conflict for the great powers of three con- 
tinents. Here again faith and superstition, 
justice and greed, truth and error, human- 
ity and barbarism, the Author of life and 
the idols of death shall again come face to 


112 God’s White Throne. 


face from the ends of the earth, and the 
epoch be one manifesting the might and 
the wisdom and the goodness of the Judge 
of all the earth. The nations shall see God 
and adore. 

The human race believes both in God 
and in its high calling. This is the phil- 
losophy of its history and progress. The 
first article of the universal creed is the 
idea of God. It is universal because it 
belongs in human nature. It is not born 
of fear or dreams. Animals fear and evi- 
dently dream, but they know and feel and 
believe nothing of God, because there is 
not that within them that answers to the 
infinite Being who created them. But God 
has made man to know him and feel his 
presence in the world. The fact of God 
without and the idea of God within answer 
to each other. This realized relationship 
is the inspiration of the race and the spring 
of its progress. Where the conception of 
God has been the highest, the inspiration 


The Race Under Discipline. 146 


of man has been fullest, and his progress 
greatest. Civilization has followed the 
truest faith in all ages. This idea of God 
answering to the fact of God makes the 
race optimistic and urges it onward to its 
goal. 

The world is not growing worse. Man- 
kind is not degenerating. The race has 
survived the fall of empires, centuries of 
bloodshed, ages of darkness, the extinction 
of nations, the doom of religions, tyranny 
over the masses, the throttle of freedom, 
and has risen to the sublime height of 
religious tolerance, political democracy, 
Christian enlightenment, industrial soci- 
ety, the advancement of science and the 
arts, equality of opportunity, co-operation 
in reforms, state schools and charities, 
free speech, and all nations have been 
brought into closer relations and sympathy 
by modern means of communication, travel, 
and commerce. Ever forward the divine 
Shekinah has led the race, and it has fol- 

8 


114 God’s White Throne. 


lowed with faith in its destiny. Men may 
doubt, but man believes. Men may despair, 
but man achieves. Men may face the past, 
but man looks into the future. Men may 
deny God, but man demands him as an ex- 
planation of the divine principle within 
him, and for the perfection of the kingdom 
of heaven in the earth. 


CHAPTER VI, 
THE GoaL or tHE INDIVIDUAL, 


Arter all it is the individual rather 
than the race that suffers. It is the indi- 
vidual also that is conscious of life, that 
apprehends God, that anticipates a destiny. 
And yet there is a sense in which the race 
as a whole feels the force of any great fact. 
No blessing or calamity can come to any 
part of the world without the rest being 
affected by it to a greater or a less degree. 
The influence of truly great and good men 
is world-wide. Great inventions, great dis- 
coveries, and great achievements lift bur- 
dens from the backs of toiling millions who 
are grateful. Ideas that inspire, reforms 
that restore hope to the helpless, philan- 
thropies that illustrate the feeling of God 


for men, sacrifice that follows the example 
115 


116 God’s White Throne. 


of the Cross, all touch the heart of the 
world as though the race had but a single 
soul. So also when any part of the world 
suffers from a great famine, a devastating 
tornado, a cruel war, an oppressive tyrant, 
a degrading religion, the whole of the 
world’s heart is moved. 

But the real sufferer is always the indi- 
vidual; and in his disciplining the race and 
his advancement of it in all that constitutes 
the world’s redemption, God has sought the 
good of the individual man; the very being 
who has felt the keenness of sorrow, the 
despair of doubt, and the crushing burdens 
of life. And, though he may never have 
been aware of God’s guardianship over 
him, though he may not have thought he 
had a soul, though the idea that he was 
appointed to a destiny divine and eternal 
may never have dawned upon his darkened 
mind, nevertheless he was God’s child, and 
God was caring for him as a father cares 
for his own. 


The Goal of the Individual. 117% 


However it is easier to believe this 
when one does not think of all that it im- 
plies. When one experiences only the 
gentler forms of God’s discipline, it is not 
so hard to bear them and believe there is 
love in the chastisement. And when one 
considers only the higher types of life and 
character that are seen in the world, it is 
not difficult to believe that in them God’s 
methods have all been salutary. 

But faith must be measured by the tests 
which it has been able to stand. Some are 
thought to be strong in the faith whose 
trials are but trifles, and are not to be 
named with the mental and physical agony 
which others have to suffer, and that not 
for days only but for life, and for no known 
fault of their own. So, when one’s life is 
all serene, buoyant, and prosperous, with 
only an oceasional disappointment or sor- 
row; when health and home and hope fill 
one’s heart with constant gladness; when 
none of the experiences or surroundings 


118 God’s White Throne. 


of one’s life force him to consider the in- 
equalities of existence and opportunity 
among men; when all the abortive, distress- 
ing, dependent specimens of human beings 
are unknown or unthought of; when all 
the numberless millions of the race who 
now live, and those who in the past have 
lived and died as the beast whose yoke they 
bore, are eliminated from the problem of 
beneficence and justice in the moral gov- 
ernment of God among men; when any one 
is insensible to all these facts that make © 
the problem so difficult, and because of his 
insensibility finds it easy for him to believe, 
his faith can not be called either durable 
or strong. It is of the sickly, hothouse 
type, and when the test comes will fail. 
But thoughtfully to face the facts and yet 
believe is not so easy at all times. And yet 
God has a plan for every man’s life; there 
is a moral goal for every man to reach; 
and God is wisely and graciously guiding 
him and guarding him, that he may safely 


The Goal of the Individual. 119 


reach that beneficent end of his being. The 
nature of both God and man makes it un- 
reasonable to think or believe otherwise. 

But it is impossible to feel that God is 
equally good and just toward all men if 
we limit human life to this world. A future 
life must be assumed. The inequalities in 
this world are so great that the remnant 
of righteousness that every intelligent man 
possesses declares that it must be so. 

A large part of the human family never 
know what life means, never feel a respon- 
sibility, never have the first opportunity, 
never know or think or feel. Those who 
die in early infancy, causing only grief to 
parental affection, will surely be given an 
opportunity hereafter under the heavenly 
Parent’s care, of becoming the intelligent, 
moral beings that they would have been 
had they lived to think and love and feel 
and trust and labor as others have in this 
world. These infant spirits do not disap- 
pear from God’s loving care. He has an 


120 God’s White Throne. 


end in view for them, and to that end he 
will ever direct their developing minds. Of 
such is the kingdom of heaven. What a 
consolation this is for all those who have 
loved and lost! 

But the problem of life is more difficult 
of solution, and the tax on one’s faith 
heavier, when we try to harmonize the 
goodness of God with the existence of the 
feeble-minded and the foolish. If ever 
there is occasion to question the immacu- 
late whiteness of God’s throne it is here. 
Itis not for any wrong that they have done 
that they have, thus been deprived of all 
except a mere animal life, or that plus a 
very feeble or a degenerate or an unsym- 
metrical mind. And yet it is not too much 
to believe that a world of truth and love 
and life shall some time astonish their 
wakened, intelligent spirits. 

We know little of the relation of the 
soul and body more than that they mutu- 
ally affect each other in some mysterious 


————— 


The Goal of the Individual. 121 


way. A high fever causes the mind of the 
patient to wander. Alcohol makes the 
mind of the inebriate stupid, foolish, or 
furious. Great grief will dethrone the rea- 
son. A clot of blood bearing on the brain 
will destroy consciousness altogether. So, 
too, any abnormal development of the brain 
will prevent a normal development of the 
child’s mind. But the God of infinite good- 
ness has not doomed these unfortunates to 
mental and moral darkness and nothing- 
ness forever. 

If so small and worthless a thing as a 
seed will lie in the frozen earth through the 
winter months, or retain its vitality 
through years and even centuries awaiting 
conditions that will cause it to grow and 
bear flower and fruit, is it unreasonable to 
think that a mind which is cramped and 
suppressed by physical conditions will, 
when these hindrances are removed, begin 
to unfold its intellectual and moral powers 
which have so long been latent? It is a 


{gy God’s White Throne. 


cause for gratitude that these unawakened 
minds that are a source of sorrow and hu- 
miliation to parents, and objects of pity 
and unsightliness to others, shall yet see 
the light and follow it as it leads them up- 
ward toward God and perfection. The 
Father ever keeps watch above his own. 
The eternities are his, and if some souls 
come to consciousness and development 
later and under different conditions than 
others, who are we that we should indict 
his goodness and wisdom or doubt his jus- 
tice and his design? 

Again, the world is full to-day, and in 
the ages past has teemed with human 
beings who never have had a fair chance of 
being what they had a perfect right to be 
as men. Some have been borne beyond the 
social dead-line, born of vicious parents 
and brought up in ignorance, immorality, 
and filth. Such are the unfortunate masses 
that make up the slum population of our 
great cities. They never have had the 


The Goal of the Individual. 123 


helps to a worthy, industrious life that 
have been the very breath of life and inspi- 
ration to others. They never have known 
the happiness and comforts and protection 
of home. To cleanliness, sufficient cloth- 
ing and food and fuel; to schools and books 
and friends and flowers and music and 
honor and truth and Church and thoughts 
of God they are strangers. They can not 
be judged as others are, because they have 
never had a chance to be what others are. 
Their birth was their doom to a submerged 
miserable existence. So cursed are they 
by what they have inherited from gener- 
ations of ancestors that they afford little 
encouragement to those who sacrifice to 
save them to a better life. They never 
have had a fair chance to be good and pure 
and cultured and useful in this world. But 
are they never to have? Are they never to 
have a chance of becoming what under fa- 
vorable conditions they might have been? 
If so, is there full justice in the moral gov- 


124 God’s White Throne. 


ernment of this world? But God is just, 
and his government righteous. It must be 
that in the life to come these souls so 
blighted and withered in this world shall 
taste of true life and better know their high 
ealling of God in Christ Jesus. 

And what of the millions who have been 
born into a world of dense darkness! Who 
have opened their eyes to behold none of 
the surroundings and feel none of the in- 
fluences that are the rich heritage of all 
who are born in the enlightened, Christian 
nations of the world! Caste and custom, 
idolatry and iniquity and _ ignorance, 
apathy, superstition, hopelessness and 
helplessness constitute the degrading con- 
ditions under which they are born and 
doomed to exist. It is a dark and difficult 
problem if a personal Providence is be- 
lieved to be over every individual among 
these benighted nations of earth. But if 
such a personal divine care is not over each 
to give all a fair chance some time of at- 


The Goai of the Individual. 125 


taining to the fullness of life, the problem 
of existence is still more hopeless of solu- 
tion, and drives the thoughtful, serious 
soul to still deeper despair. 

But it is certainly true that, unless 
there is an extension of opportunity in an 
after life, so that what these millions 
lacked in this life shall be bountifully and 
graciously given them, that they may come 
to realize that they are God’s offspring, 
they have not had justice shown them at 
all. The goodness and justice of God as- 
sures a full measure of compensation some 
time, somewhere. 

To say that they are ignorant of their 
state, and therefore are aware of no dis- 
advantage, does not solve the question. It 
is the righteousness and reasonableness of 
enlightened minds and honest hearts that 
are violated if the goal of life is reached by 
them in this world. But he who dwells in 
the high and lofty place, who inhabits eter- 
nity, extends his beneficent government to 


126 God’s White Throne. 


all individuals through all ages, and forgets 
them not while eternity rolls, and their 
spirits immortal with faces toward the light 
aspire to be what God has appointed as 
their crown and triumph. 

Questions such as future punishment, a 
second probation, and the unpardonable 
sin the author does not raise. They are 
not relevant to the subject under discus- 
sion. Concerning these deep and solemn 
questions faith proclaims that the Judge 
of all the earth will do right. He will do 
right by every man in this world, and will 
not abandon him in the world to come.’ His 
love and goodness forbid it. If his revela- 
tion has not reached all his Spirit has, and 
the conscience of no responsible soul has 
been deprived utterly of the sacred touch 
and some of the holy light of heaven. 

Wherever there exists sufficient intelli- 
gence and freedom of choice to make a man 
responsible for the life that he lives, there 
are the factors that determine destiny. 


The Goal of the Indiwidual. 127 


The soul that persists in righteousness be- 
comes fixed in it, while the soul that per- 
sists in sin becomes fixed in sin. The 
longer a soul follows either course, the 
harder it is for him to love and follow the 
other. Character is destiny here and here- 
after. It is a beneficent law, though the 
violation of it be so fatal in its effects. 
Nevertheless it can not be said that these 
badly born and badly bred beings have an 
equal chance of being true men and true 
women with those who are born in refined, 
intelligent, Christian society. 

In addition to sufficient light from the 
Spirit of truth to enable the inquiring soul 
feebly to trust a God of infinite pity and 
compassion, and dimly to hope in his 
mercy, there is need of a wholesome stimu- 
lus to mental activity, a bracing moral at- 
mosphere, social surroundings to develop 
individuality, cleanliness and clothing and 
comforts to cause them to feel a legitimate 
pride in their decency, together with the 


128 God’s White Throne. 


sights and songs of God’s beautiful world 
and the artistic touches that have been 
given it by human hands. But it is these 
latter things that so many are deprived of, 
and the deprivation of these things ac- 
counts for their moral depravity. 

To what, then, can this condition of 
these multitudes be attributed? It is cer- 
tain that they are not all wholly irrespon- 
sible for their own state. No one can be 
held wholly responsible for a bad state, or 
be given the entire credit for a good state 
of hfe and character. Heredity and envi- 
ronment largely make us what we are. But 
it can not be denied that the laws of hered- 
ity and bad environment have hit these 
wretched degenerates of the earth harder 
than they have those who are more highly 
favored. ‘This accounts for their worse 
condition. The gravitation downward is 
greater than the attraction upward. For 
this God is not at fault, but his justice will 
not fail to hold others largely responsible 


The Goal of the Individual. 128 


for it. His justice will surely call the fa- 
vored classes who have passed by on the 
other side to account. It will also bring to 
judgment the progenitors of this low-born 
population who have bequeathed to their 
offspring such a curse as their heritage. 
But it must be that this same divine justice 
will also remember to compensate in some 
way these objects of pity to the full extent 
of their disadvantage in this world. 

There is profound philosophy in the di- 
versity and inequality of gifts among men. 
But this does not mean that the man who 
has the few ordinary talents is less favored 
of God or less a benefactor of the race than 
the one who is more richly endowed, pro- 
viding he makes use of what is given him. 
The brawny laborer is as much a man as 
the brainy author, and merits as much the 
world’s homage. There is necessity of 
such a diversity of gifts to provide the race 
with its diverse needs. 


But the mysteries of life do not lie in 
9 


130 God’s White Throne. 


this direction. It is apparent to all that 
the good things of this life are not given 
to good men in much greater measure than 
they are to the evil. This is true to such 
a degree that many insist that the bad fare 
even better than the good. This is the mys- 
terious fact that is so hard to reconcile with 
the government of a good God among men. 
When a state or nation enacts a law that 
benefits only a few citizens, while it violates 
the civil rights of the majority, we attrib- 
ute it to political demagoguery. And when 
in civil court there is a miscarriage of jus- 
tice, punishing the innocent man and let- 
ting the guilty go free, it is due to insuff- 
cient evidence, a prejudiced judge or jury, 
a discrepency in the law, or some influence 
that defeats the course of justice and de- 
prives the citizen of his sacred rights. 
But God is infinitely good and just and 
wise. It can not be said of him that he de- 
sires the good of one soul more than an- 
other, that he favors one above another, 


Lhe Goal of the Individual. 131 


that he is ignorant in the smallest degree 
of the circumstances of any man’s life, or 
that his laws are ever imperfect or in- 
operative. 

And yet we see unscrupulous, immoral, 
blasphemous, cruel men in the full enjoy- 
ment of health and publie favor, having all 
theycomforts and luxuries of life that great 
wealth can secure, while thousands of toil- 
ing, honest God-fearing men are ever face 
to face with want and struggle from year 
to year to keep the wolf from their door. 

We see the most useful and influential 
men and women taken out of the world at 
the time when they seem to be most useful 
and most needed, while men and women 
who are wicked and full of all uncleanness 
are permitted to live on to pollute society 
and propagate their species. 

We see some violating continually 
every law of health through all the years 
of a long life-time, who nevertheless retain 
the full enjoyment of good health down to 


132 God’s White Throne. 


old age, while others who are prudent and 
temperate and take extreme care of their 
health are smitten with lingering disease 
and are forced into retirement to suffer in 
silence through weary years until death 
sets them free. 

We see the poor and the weak crushed 
and cursed by the rich and strong, the inno- 
cent suffer at the hand of the guilty, the 
avaricious grow rich and haughty while 
they prey upon the lives of helpless women 
and children, the truthful and honorable 
suffer because they are true and honest, 
villains laugh while saints weep. All 
of this do we see in a world where God 
reigns and remembers every soul and 
makes each one the object of his loving 
care. 

It is not always easy for every one to 
believe that this is true. The bitter expe- 
riences that most of us have to suffer or 
see others suffer, while we realize our utter 
inability to help ourselves or comfort them, 


The Goal of the Individual. 133 


make it hard to be submissive and trustful 
at all times. But it is in the very difficulty 
that we have of reconciling these apparent 
contradictions of divine goodness, and be- 
lieving with never a shadow of doubt, or an 
approach of fear, that all things work to- 
gether for good to them that love God and 
are called according to his purpose, that 
the wisdom and goodness of our heavenly 
Father are hidden. | 
God is not displeased with us in our 
efforts to understand all that we can about 
his dealings with us. This is a part of our 
high calling. But neither our efforts to un- 
derstand nor a knowledge of his purpose 
concerning us will suffice to unfold in us 
the best that we are capable of becoming. 
We are moral beings, appointed to a moral 
career and destiny, hence the problems of 
experience are wisely and graciously de- 
signed to develop the higher moral and 
spiritual elements of character in us. We 
were not made for this world, but it was 


134 God’s White Throne. 


made for us and adapted to our use and 
end. Itis therefore pre-eminently a moral 
world. If, therefore, so much of it lies be- 
yond the reach of our understanding, if so 
much of it lies out of the range of our judg- 
ment of what is just, if so many of our ex- 
periences are too heavy for us to bear, it is 
not solely because God chooses to hide him- 
self from us, or because he wishes to be 
severe with us, but because he wants to see 
us made complete, bearing the likeness of 
his own lovable nature. 

One of the noblest faculties of the soul 
is faith. It leads in realms where reason 
is lost and where knowledge fails. In com- 
mercial matters business would be at a 
standstill if men did not have faith in each 
other. Friendship, fraternity, and love are 
founded on the faith that we place in 
others. Christian work would become un- 
interesting, hopeless drudgery, if it went 
on at all, were it not that we firmly believed 
in the savableness of sinful men and were 


The Goal of the Individual. 185 


confident that the truth of the Gospel is 
the bread of life to souls that are famish- 
ing for that which nothing of this world af- 
fords. Such an important factor is faith 
in the formation of Christian character 
that the word of God teaches us that by it 
we stand, by it we walk, by it we live, by it 
we overcome, by it we inherit promises, by 
it mountains melt away and insurmount- 
able difficulties disappear. It is the sub- 
stance of things hoped for, the evidence of 
things not seen. Thus it is that by faith we 
may see the unseen and raise ourselves to 
lofty heights and repose peacefully in 
God’s goodness and faithfulness toward 
us. Ina religious sense faith is one of the 
sublimest attributes of character of which 
the human soul is capable. It is especially 
spiritual, and without it no soul in this life 
or in that which is to come can be in har- 
mony with God and happy under his dis- 
pensation. 

But the development of faith requires a 


136 God’s White Throne. 


sphere in which we can not always see our 
way or know the reason of things. If we 
could trace out all of the mysteries of life 
and follow all effects back to their causes, 
if we could see as God does the beneficent 
outcome of all our sufferings and witness 
as he does the daily glorification of afflicted, 
sorrowful souls who trust his care and are 
sustained by his grace, life would afford no 
opportunities for faith to act and become a 
grace of God’s image in our souls. This 
world and life’s experiences in it, therefore, 
are a necessary means to the great end of 
our being as we shall some time see, though 
our eyes are yet too dim to behold it. 
Charity, philanthropy, love, sacrifice, 
virtues all akin and all Christ-like, need 
the opportunities and occasions which just 
such a world as ours affords for their 
manifestation and development. If there 
were no poverty there would be no call for 
charity. If health and happiness, and free- 
dom from sorrow and suffering and de- 


The Goal of the Individual. 187 


spair were the good fortune of all men, no 
man’s sympathy would be stirred, little 
love would be manifested, or kindness 
shown; but selfishness and cold-hearted 
disregard of others would abound. If 
equal opportunity and means were af- 
forded all of obtaining a living or an edu- 
cation or a social standing or the blessings 
of Christian light and hope, there would be 
nothing to elicit the great philanthropies, 
set in motion the great reforms, or call 
forth the sacrifices which bless the world. 

The mysterious social bond that makes 
the world’s pulse beat as though the race 
had but one heart leads us to recognize 
every man as our brother and sacrifice self- 
ishness to the rights of others. Thus is 
Christian society formed for the mutual 
good of all. The bond of heredity also 
which causes the life-blood to flow from 
generation to generation, carrying with it 
the vigor of health and intellect and indus- 
try and character, or the virus of disease 


138 God’s White Throne. 


and imbecility and indolence and crime, is 
an everlasting appeal to every one to prac- 
tice the highest virtues, not for his own 
good alone, but for the good of generations 
yet unborn. There is not a noble trait of 
character which is not quickened and per- 
fected by the moral mysteries that crowd 
into our thought and experience in this 
world, and there is not one of them which 
would not lie dormant and weak in our 
souls and leave us more unhappy and the 
world more miserable if we had just such 
‘a world to live in as our shortsightedness 
and love of ease would choose. The world 
that we have is the best; it fits our needs, 
though it may not meet our ideal. 

It is well for us that we do not have our 
own way more than we do. For certainly 
nothing could be more fatal to our highest 
good than for us to have just what we want 
and have the world move as we should like 


to see it. We are all human, and it is hu- | 


man to shrink from suffering. We would 


The Goal of the Indwidual. 1389 


rather see than believe. But if God should 
take us by the hand and lead us along the 
smooth paths of life; if he should answer 
all our inquiries, solve all our problems, 
and make plain to us all mysteries; if he 
should freely grant all our desires for ease 
and honor, health and happiness, prosper- 
ity and length of days; if he should keep us 
blissfully ignorant of all our faults and de- 
fects and mistakes and shield us from pub- 
lic censure and a piercing conscience when 
we do wrong; if he should keep us from 
coming into contact with the disgusting 
and unsightly objects of sin and disease 
and brutishness and villainy and all dis- 
tressing types of humanity; if he should 
take us into his council and consult our 
wishes about seasons and storms and cli- 
mate and temperature and crops; if he 
should ordain that laws shall have no pen- 
alty, sin no retribution, and that we be the 
unconditional recipients of peace, perfec- 
tion, and life eternal; if he should grant us 


140 God’s White Throne. 


these and all other rash requests of our 
selfishness, ignorance, vanity, and weak- 
ness, it 1s not hard to see what the conse- 
quence would be to the world and how ut- 
terly the end of our creation would be de- 
feated. We should have a world void or 
all beauty, life, excellence, and order; a 
world of misery, darkness, and death. And 
we should be void of all mental and moral 
character, rising little above a merely 
brute existence and having no aspirations 
to be anything better. 

No one is wise enough to know all that 
is best for himself or for others or for the 
world, much less for the ages to come. And 
yet who is so blind as not to see that most 
of the mysteries of life have been good 
things in disguise? He may not see them 
all to be so. No one is wise enough for 
that. But if he viewed life in its true per- 
spective, if he saw from the central po- 
sition of the throne of wisdom and love, is 
it not probable, even certain, that he would 


The Goal of the Individual. 141 


see all things working together for good? 
In that light would he not see light? 

In our thoughtlessness we wish that we 
might. see the beneficent end of our suffer- 
ing, if there be one, and in our selfishness 
and weakness wish that we might reap the 
benefit and be spared the pain, little think- 
ing that we would have to be infinite in our 
prevision to see the end, and that it would 
only be pampering our peevishness to be 
spared the ordeal of suffering. 

God covets for all men the happiness 
that can come only to such as are in har- ' 
mony with himself. His methods of mold- 
ing us into his own likeness vary from se- 
verity to gentleness, but in all there is the 
love of an infinite heart. But such is our 
nature that there seems to be no other way 
of developing in us the highest degree of 
spirituality. It is easier for us to see love 
in his gentleness, but there are times when 
we all need experiences of a different kind. 

But there are worse things than sor- 


1492 God’s White Throne. 


rows and adversity and even death; and 
there are better things, too, than ease and 
prosperity and even life itself. To charge 
God with cruelty and doubt his love for US ; 
to love evil rather than good; to live a life 
of shame instead of a life of purity; to be 
selfish rather than self-sacrificing; to be 
the cause of sorrow and lead the innocent 
to ruin, when we should scatter sunshine 
wherever we go and be examples of godli- 
ness in conduct and character; to crush the 
weak with still heavier burdens, when we 
might lift the loads of life from their tired 
shoulders; to cast thorns and flints in the 
path of weary travelers, rather than make 
life’s journey smoother for them; these 
and many other things are infinitely worse 
than innocent pain and poverty and dis- 
ease and death. 

Those who are blessed with health and 
strength for the activities of life are to be 
congratulated. What a delight it is to have 
a work to do and strength to do it! To 


The Goal of the Individual. 148 


have a body that is free from pain, a heart 
full of cheer, a will resolute, a mind clean 
and clear, and go forth to life’s battles to 
win one’s way and earn a living for loved 
ones, or, in the more retired relations of 
life, to beautify the home and make it a 
very heaven of happiness, is certainly 
sweeter than any earthly song ever sung. 
To be favored with wealth and influence 
and social advantages and great opportu- 
nities for usefulness are things for which 
all who are so favored should be humbly 
grateful. It may seem to all such that they 
are creatures of God’s special care, and 
their good fortune may cause the less fa- 
vored to envy them their happiness. 

But with all these riches. of health 
and wealth and opportunity are given im- 
mense responsibilities, and therein lies the 
danger-point. Is it not a fact that the fa- 
vored ones more often forget God and are 
less grateful and possess fewer graces of 
the Spirit than the unfortunate? Is it be- 


144 God’s White Throne. 


cause the sufferer is given more grace than 
is afforded the fortunate? Is it because 
earthly supports have all given away and 
he casts himself upon God, while his fortu- 
nate brother trusts earthly things and 
thinks them sufficient? Is it because the 
afflicted has God in all his thoughts and 
makes his seclusion his Bethel, while the 
man of affairs has no time to devote to 
spiritual things? Is it because the one is 
having such a busy time or such a good 
time now, that he does not think of the 
future or prepare for a day of accounts, 
while the other, having fewer attachments 
for the present and greater longings for 
the life that is without tears, trusts God 
and waits with patience and hope? What- 
ever be the cause of the strange contradic- 
tion, there is food for reflection which 
neither the fortunate or the afflicted should 
fail to consider. But the end that God has 
in view for every one is a life of union with 
himself, and the attainment, through his 


The Goal of the Individual. 145 


grace and by his providences, of the image 
of Christ, the exemplar of all mankind. 

The sufferer is not one whom God has 
forgotten. Sooner will a mother forget 
her only child; sooner will the patriot turn 
traitor to his country’s flag; sooner will 
angels cease to chant the 7’e Deum of the 
highest heaven; sooner will the Church 
militant cease to war against sin and bear 
no longer the ensign of Calvary to a lost 
world; sooner will God himself cease to 
mark the orbits for circling worlds and let 
the universe fall into chaos; sooner far 
will all this come to pass than the time 
when the Father of love shall cease to 
guard with gentle solicitude the sufferer 
who looks to him for refuge. 

To such as trust in him he giveth songs 
in the night. Though no chastisement for 
the present seemeth to be joyous, but griev- 
ous, nevertheless it yieldeth the peaceable 
fruits of righteousness to them that are 

10 


146 God’s White Throne. 


exercised thereby. There is compensation, 
but it is only for those who receive the 
discipline of life in a teachable spirit. 
How the sufferer endures life without God 
is hard to see; and to be without the good 
things of this life and have no hope for the 
life to come, is a state too sad to think 
upon. But for all who are in sorrow or 
sore trial of any sort there is the power of 
transfiguration in their suffering. The 
sick room and the disappointed, secluded 
life have worked the most wonderful trans- 
formations and triumphs that the angels 
of God ever witnessed. 

Our divine Lord was a man of sorrows 
and experienced in grief. But the path of 
suffering which led to his erucifixion led 
also to his glorification. By this he showed 
us the mystery, without explaining it, that 
if we would be with him and be like him we 
must follow his steps. If we suffer we 
shall reign with him. There is wisdom not 


The Goal of the Individual. 147 


hike our common philosophy, and ways of 
learning it of which the schools know noth- 
ing. The fear of the Lord is the beginning 
of wisdom, and to depart from evil is un- 
derstanding. The pure in heart shall see 
God. If we would learn, let us remember 
that it is to the teachable spirit and the 
humble heart that the way of knowledge 
stands open. 

It is not supposable, however, that we 
could see his plan for our lives from the 
beginning to the end. He has many things 
to teach us, but we can not bear them now. 
We must Jearn in life’s kindergarten be- 
fore we can walk with God along the high- 
ways of knowledge. Now we know in part, 
but if we are teachable we shall come to 
know even as we are known. We may not 
know why we must suffer, and suffer too 
when others do not. But life is crowded 
with mysteries, though it is those that come 
into our own experiences that impress us 


148 God’s White Throne. 


most deeply. We do not know, but we 
know that he knows, and that is far better. 
If we knew more we would trust less and 
be better satisfied without God. But 
knowledge waits for us if we will be pa- 
tient. We shall know, as the sorrowful old 
patriarch knew ages ago when he said in 
reply to his accusers: ‘‘Behold | go for- 
ward, but he is not there; and backward, 
but I can not perceive him; on the left hand 
where he doth work, but I can not behold 
him; he hideth himself on the right hand 
that I can not see him. But he knoweth 
the way that I take; when he hath tried me 
I shall come forth as gold.”’ 

If we must suffer instead of serve, let 
us suffer as heroically as we would serve. 
It may be that suffering is the highest serv- 
ice we can give to the world. If it is harder 
to suffer than it is to serve, and we suffer 
well, we must be serving well. Thereby we 
will also be magnifying the grace of God 


The Goal of the Individual. 149 


so freely given to all in every time of need. 
Then let patience have her perfect work, 
that we may be perfect and entire, wanting 
nothing. For he will not break the bruised 
reed, he will not quench the smoking wick 
until he sends forth judgment unto a vic- 
torious end. 


CHAPTER VII. 
PRAYER AND PROVIDENCE. 


In the problem of divine government 
providence and prayer are both implied as 
fundamental factors. For divine govern- 
ment implies intelligent moral subjects 
who are conscious of responsibilities, who 
feel their dependence, who aspire for things 
that are excellent and spiritual, who think 
of duty and destiny and God. But if no 
such intelligent moral subjects existed 
there would be none to feel after God or 
seek his grace. Prayer would then be a 
thing never uttered by man, never heard 
by God. 

On the other hand if, as some think, 
God were so far above the world as to take 
no interest in us who are the subjects of 
his government, if, as is claimed, when he 

150 


Prayer and Providence. 151 


created the world and established its 
goings according to self-acting laws, he 
ceased to care for his creatures or listen 
to their cry, then there would be no provi- 
dence. We would be left to the cold mer- 
cies of heartless nature, with no Father 
above to satisfy our hearts. Our prayers 
would return to us as empty echoes from 
ears that do not hear, and from a heart 
that never feels. 

Prayer is the passion of the devout soul 
for God, the pleadings of the dependent 
soul for his merey and his grace. Provi- 
dence is the response of infinite wisdom 
and love to the needs of him who seeks his 
help from God. But so great is God’s 
knowledge of his creation, that there is 
nothing too profound for his comprehen- 
sion and nothing too simple to claim his 
notice; and in all his wonderful world there 
is nothing that so commands his special 
solicitude and tender care as souls immor- 
tal. He forgets not even the sparrow and 


152 God’s White Throne. 


the flower. But men are the creatures who, 
more than all others, have a place in his 
thoughts and a home in his heart. 

But if God’s knowledge of us and of 
our needs is so perfect, and his love for us 
is so great, why should it be necessary for us 
to pray in order that we may receive from 
him the help that we need? Must he still 
be pleaded with that he may be prevailed 
on to grant us his forgiveness, his grace, 
his care, his light, his deliverance? Not- 
withstanding his knowledge of our needs 
and his love for our souls, is there still a 
slight reservation in his disposition to be- 
stow his mercies upon us in the fullest 
measure which requires pleading upon our 
part to have turned in our favor? If this 
is true, is God as good to us as he would 
be if he fully and freely gave and forgave 
us all, so that we should never need to sup- 
plicate his throne? How much is the 
course which God would have taken with 
the world, or any part of it, and especially 


Prayer and Providence. 153 


with those who pray, changed by the 
prayers which are offered by men, however 
devout they may be? If in divine govern- 
ment there is a place for prayer, and 
prayer in any way affects the providence 
of God, may we ask anything that we de- 
sire with the full expectation of having it 
granted us? Or, after all, does prayer do 
more than change a man’s character and 
his attitude toward God? Ina government 
of an infinitely wise and good God over a 
world of dependent, imperfect men, has 
prayer a place and a power? and what are 
its limitations? 

In all our meditations upon these ques- 
tions we must take our departure from the 
triple truth that God is a moral Sover- 
eign, that man is a moral subject, and that 
the government of God in men is adminis- 
tered with the view to perfecting their 
moral natures, and thus finally perfecting 
a moral world. 

That moral evil exists in the world re- 


154 God’s White Throne. 


quires no argument to prove. The appeal 
to conscience is sufficient. Moral evil is in 
the world, and there is every evidence and 
reason to believe that God wishes to get it 
out. But why did he let it get into the 
world, and how did it get in? Could he 
not have kept it out? For, of all the ap- 
palling, dark facts in the universe of which 
we have any knowledge, this fact, the pres- 
ence of moral evil in the world comes near- 
est to being a stain upon the white throne 
of Deity. It is, of course, a characteristic 
only of moral beings; that is, of beings 
who, when they do evil, are able to do good 
instead. To what extent it exists beyond 
this world and in spirits departed who once 
had this world as their home, but now 
dwell we know not where, we have no 
means of knowing. But it is in the world, 
and we know that God can not be its author. 

The probability that evil would get into 
the world rose when man was created. He 
is a finite being. There are limitations 


Prayer and Providence. Loo 


upon all his powers. If there were not he 
would be God’s equal. But his knowledge 
was very imperfect; he was certain, there- 
fore, of making the mistake of thinking 
sometimes that evil was good, or that good 
was evil. His will was imperfect; he was 
therefore likely to choose the evil course 
instead of the good. Evil in the world is 
therefore due to the fact that man is not 
God, but simply imperfect man. And had 
he been anything different he would not 
have been man at all. God is then not at 
fault, unless his fault be in his having cre- 
ated man at all. The evil that is in the 
world originated in the finite, not in the in- 
‘finite, and that because it is finite. There 
was as great a probability that moral 
wrong would get into the world through the 
acts of imperfect moral beings, as that 
there would be physical pain in bodies hav- 
ing a nervous system. 

This is as true in the theory that evil 
is only a stage in the evolution of man from 


156 God’s White Throne. 


inanimate matter to a moral and immortal 
destiny, as it is in the theory that it had 
its origin in the fall of man from a state 
of perfection which he had at his creation. 
The only difference being that in the de- 
generation theory the evil crept in by the 
wrong choice of the first parents of the 
race, and has been passed down to all suc- 
ceeding generations as their sorrowful in- 
heritance; while in the evolution theory it 
came into existence somewhere along the 
line of human development at the point 
where the human soul rose to a self-con- 
scious and self-acting intelligence, know- 
ing right from wrong, but preferring the 
wrong instead of the right. In either case 
the wrong had its origin in beings who were 
conscious of pursuing a wrong course in 
preference to a right. Evil is then in the 
world as an innovation, and not as a neces- 
sary feature of God’s moral government. 
But as it is in the world, the government 
of God implies a place for both providence 


Prayer and Providence. 157 


and prayer, that it may be exterminated 
from the earth. 

But so intricate and wise are the ways 
of God and so great is his goodness, that 
we do not always know what limitations 
providence places upon prayer. Our ig- 
norance and self-interest may often lead us 
to ask for things that would defeat the 
wiser course of providence should our re- 
quests be granted. But there is one thing 
for which we may pray with the assurance 
that our desire will not be contrary to the 
goodness and wisdom of God. We may 
pray to be saved and kept from sin, and be 
conformed to the divine image. In this 
human prayer and divine providence never, 
never conflict. 

And yet sin is a relative thing. That 
is, the iniquity of it in the sight of God 
and its blameworthiness in us is measured 
by the standard of our intelligence of what 
sin is and the strength of our wills to resist 
wrong. What one man may think is right, 


158 God’s White Throne. 


another may think is wrong, and what one 
may have power to do, another may be un- 
able to do. But if sincerity be the very 
substance of all our pleadings, we may be 
confident that God will forgive sin and give 
us to feel that he has done it. He will also 
give us light on questions of duty and guide 
us in paths of right. The God who is per- 
fect in goodness, and wishes all men to bear 
his image and do his holy will, rejoices to 
hear the prayer of souls who seek him; it 
is for this very purpose that his throne is 
set in the heavens. He rules to rid the 
world of wrong. God answers the prayer 
of him who prays for the forgiveness of his 
own sins, and to have his own mind and 
will and heart firmly fixed to think and do 
and love the right. 

But when we pray for anything beyond 
this we may not be sure that our prayers 
will always be answered, even though 
God’s will and our own agree. We may 
pray that others be saved and kept from 


Prayer and Providence. 159 


sin; we may pray that widely prevalent 
social sins may cease; we may pray that 
organized wrong may be put down; that, 
for instance, the drink evil may be out- 
lawed, that wars may be no more, or that 
the nations may enact no unjust laws and 
be interested in no iniquitous business. 
While all these requests would be in har- 
mony with the divine will, they might not 
be realized, because that might mean the 
arbitrary turning of other wills from the 
course of evil that are resolutely set in the 
opposite course. 

Again, while we may be sure that God 
regards all sin, whether individual, social, 
or national, with righteous disapproval, 
and would have it all to cease in all his 
moral kingdom, there are other things 
which we may think are evils that infinite 
wisdom may not consider such. We may 
pray that providence may rule against 
them, and wonder why it is not so; but 
there is wisdom greater than ours in the 


160 God’s White Throne. 


direction of affairs of this world. We are 
unable always to determine what evil and 
good are, or to whom and under what cir- 
cumstances they are such; but God is. We 
may think that the death of a President is 
a national calamity, and the Christian 
world may pray that God spare his life 
for the good of his wise counsel and the in- 
fluence of his noble example; still, the 
prayers of the millions may not be an- 
swered. But what man with his little mind 
and short vision can tell truly that the 
President’s death would be a calamity? 
For the present it may so appear, and 
many who do not believe in either prayer 
or providence may conclude that his death, 
notwithstanding the prayers offered, and 
the nation’s need of his wise leadership, is 
proof that neither prayer nor providence 
avails anything for the good of the world. 

The same question may be raised upon 
the death of any one whose life we pray 
may be spared. But who knows when the 


Prayer and Providence. 161 


work of any man is finished? Who knows 
when it is best for him that he be taken out 
of the world? Who knows when it is best 
that those who have relied upon him be 
thrown upon their own resources? Of two 
things we may be sure: we may be sure 
that God knows, and we may be confident 
that no good influence that any man has ex- 
erted in this life shall ever perish from the 
earth. The good and the true are divine, 
and the divine never dies. To say that 


“The evil that men do lives after them, 
The good is often interred with their bones,”’ 


is abominably pessimistic. It is not true. 

In the wise providence of God may it 
not be best that the good go away when 
they do, just as the Master said of himself 
when, with Calvary and the cross in sight, 
he tried to console his sorrowing disciples, 
saying: ‘‘It is expedient for you that I go 
away; for if I go not away the Comforter 
will not come unto you; but if I go away I 


will send him unto you?’’? Our Lord an- 
11 | 


162 God’s White Throne. 


nounces here a universal principle. In the 
minds of his followers the death of our 
Lord was a fatal blow at the kingdom of 
heaven. But after his departure the wider 
conception of the kingdom dawned upon 
them; the larger experience came to their 
hearts; the richer consolation filled their 
souls; greater power was given them; the 
local and the temporal were seen to be uni- 
versal, spiritual, and everlasting. 

Likewise when the good, the useful, and 
the beloved die it seems a strange provi- 
dence, and when prayers are offered that it 
be not so, it may seem to some stranger 
still that they are taken. But the influence 
for good that they had in life is at once 
liberated and enlarged, and though they be 
dead they yet speak. As a result hearts 
become more humble, lives are made more 
useful, sympathies are broadened, and 
often do we see noble charities and great 
philanthropies spring up to commemorate 
the dead and bless the living for many gen- 


ae ad 


Prayer and Providence. 163 


erations. That which is sown is not quick- 
ened except it die, and except it be quick- 
ened it can not bring forth abundantly fruit 
of its kind. 

Nevertheless it is human to sorrow over 
personal loss or bereavement, and stand in 
awe at any great calamity, but care should 
be taken not to hold grievance against God 
on account of them. For if we saw the 
combination of causes that bring them to 
pass, it might surprise us to see how little 
God was responsible for them, and how 
much others, and possibly even ourselves, 
were the cause of them. We know that 
when time has given us the true perspect- 
ive we have never seen that God has done 
wrong or made any mistake, and if we wait 
it is certain that the things over which we 
now sorrow and suffer will be dissolved in 
the same light. 

There is moral evil in the world, and 
so closely related is the moral world with 
the physical, not only in the interaction of 


164 God’s White Throne. 


our minds and bodies, but also in the inter- 
action of the moral world with the material 
world, that we do not know to what extent 
the calamities in the physical or natural 
world are due to disturbances in the moral 
world. Excellence of character, recog- 
nition of the laws of life and reverence for 
God tend to a corresponding perfection of 
body, while a life of sin and lowmindedness 
leaves its ugly marks on the face and the 
physique of the wrong-doer. 

It might be rash to affirm that the im- 
perfections and dire calamities of the phy- 
sical world are also equally the conse- 
quences of the moral condition of the race. 
But there are certain facts which lead one 
to wonder whether the whole creation does 
not groan and travail together in pain be- 
eause of the moral condition of the world. 
We see imperfections in all animal and 
vegetable species, and we see among them 
the ravages of disease and suffering and 
death. May this not all be a consequence 


Prayer and Providence. 165 


of the sin which God foresaw would cause 
frailty and mortality in men: may nature 
not have been stamped with these marks 
to teach men lessons in humility and sym- 
pathy with all God’s creatures? Again we 
see in all the lower orders, both plant and 
animal, the process of reparation take 
place when an injury is sustained. May 
this not be the primer lesson of the redemp- 
tion truth which afterward and co-ordinate 
with it was unfolded to an intelligent, sin- 
ful world in the book of revelation? 

At any rate, these facts are suggestive 
that, after all, world catastrophies and in- 
dividual sufferings may be due to moral 
evil either as their cause or their occasion. 
The universal blight and blemish that mark 
the whole animal and vegetable world, in- 
eluding man’s physical and moral nature, 
point to some great calamity that has be- 
fallen our world. And as the highest is the 
moral, and all else is made subservient to 
it, the indication is that the occasion or the 


166 God’s White Throne. 


cause of it all was moral evil, which had its 
effect first on man’s moral nature, and then 
on his physical, which is affected by the 
moral, and that all nature bears the same 
marks of imperfection for the purpose of 
ever reminding man of his sins, of their 
consequences, and of his moral condition. 

Mankind has ventured to violate the 
laws of God’s wise and beneficent govern- 
ment, and suffers as a consequence. But 
providence is not at fault, and if prayer 
is not always answered to avert evil, one 
must not conclude that it is of no avail. In 
view of the moral condition and needs of 
the race and of ourselves, many of the 
things which we regard as evils may, for 
our good, be necessary as well as providen- 
tial, and if we learn the lessons that they 
teach and profit by what we learn, they 
may all be turned to good aecount for us. 

Again there is consolation and hope for 
the world in the fact that sin is self- 
destructive, while righteousness is self- 


Prayer and Providence. 167 


perpetuating. Sin kills itself by limiting 
the powers and shortening the generation 
of evil-doers. As sin is not of God and is 
outlawed in his government, it is something 
unnatural in the world. It is in its very 
nature a discord. It throws confusion into 
the otherwise harmonious natures of men, 
and weakens and limits their every power. 
Drunkenness, immorality, anger, hatred, 
debauchery, avarice, blasphemy, all leave 
their evil effects on the souls and bodies 
of men, and in a few generations the stock 
becomes extinct unless a counter force of 
righteousness and thrift is introduced and 
Saves it. 

But righteousness is harmony. It 
makes music in the soul, and is in tune with 
God and the kingdom of heaven. It 
strengthens every power of the mental and 
moral and physical nature of man. It is 
_self-perpetuating, because it perpetuates 
the generations of good men. Hence it is 
written: ‘‘I the Lord thy God am a jealous 


168 God’s White Throne. 


God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on 
their children unto the third and fourth 
generation of them that hate me; and show- 
ing mercy unto thousands of them (gener- 
ations) that love me and keep my com- 
mandments.’’ 

The law of revelation is only a tran- 
script of the law of nature. Both are of 
God, and in both there is wisdom and good- 
ness. By this law evil-doers are cut off, 
they do not live out half their days, and 
the meek are given to inherit the earth. 
The beneficence of this law should cause all 
men to rejoice. In its operation largely 
hes the hope of the world. If iniquity 
made men strong and lengthened their life; 
if it gave no man a disadvantage; if it 
never made men cowards or took from 
them the confidence of the people; then we 
should have reasons to fear for the tri- 
umph of righteousness and have grounds 
to question God’s discrimination in favor 
of the good. 


Prayer and Providence. 169 


Here, again, prayer and providence are 
co-ordinate and fundamental factors in 
moral government. Both are set against 
evil for its extermination. Prayer enables 
men to trust God; it takes from them all 
elements that are antagonistic to the will 
of God; it links them with God and makes 
his strength their own; the feeling that they 
are identified with the Almighty One gives 
them courage to face the wrong and defend 
the right; it strengthens every mental and 
moral power that they possess. Thus does 
God make the beneficent effects of his law 
an eternal object-lesson, teaching the world 
that he that sins against him wrongs his 
own soul, and that the just shall live by 
his faith. 

Whether the human wish expressed in 
prayer changes the will of God or not, of 
this we are sure: It changes the mora! 
character of the petitioner. For prayer is 
more than merely verbal utterances which 
may be meaningless for the want of sin- 


170 God’s White Throne. 


cerity. Prayer does not necessarily re- 
quire the use of words at all. Prayer is 
communion with God. It is open-hearted 
fellowship; it is an attitude of duty, life, 
and devotion; it implies trust in the 
Father’s wisdom, love for his ways and his 
word, the merging of our wills into his, 
and submission to every order of his provi- 
dence. Yes, there are times when language 
is worthless to express the desires of the 
soul. The human tongue can not even 
stammer out the deep longings of a true 
heart for God and spiritual things. We 
ean only be dumb with silence. We can 
not even think the thoughts of waking di- 
vinity within us. That which is begotten 
of God must be left to him for interpreta- 
tion. The Spirit makes intercession for 
us with groanings which can not be uttered. 

Prayer changes us and gives God a 
changed appearance to us. It lifts us into 
his likeness, and gives to us a correspond- 
ingly clearer knowledge of him. We see 


Prayer and Providence. Led 


him more as he is, but the change is in us 
rather than in him. And yet the change in 
us makes it possible for him to do for us 
What he otherwise could not have done. 
He then can give us consolation in our sor- 
rows. He can sweeten every bitter cup of 
a life of toil and suffering and disappoint- 
ment. He can give us grace for every trial. 
He can make clear to our minds many of 
the mysteries of life and teach us the 
moral lessons of others. He can make 
plain the path of duty. He can make the 
future radiant with hope. He can take 
from death its terrors, and from the grave 
its victory. He can make us more than 
conquerors through him who hath loved us. 
God does not have to be pleaded with to 
have him do what he otherwise would not 
do. But we have to plead in order to put 
ourselves in a position before him to be 
blest. His disposition toward us is not 
changed. Infinite love has no degrees of 


172 God’s White Throne. 


greater or less. It is always changeless, 
boundless. 

His infinite love makes it impossible for 
him, also, to break up the stability of his 
righteous government and nullify his moral 
laws, that the sinner may be as happy in 
his sins as the saint is in his holiness. He 
will not throw his world into confusion 
to please the foolish who pray for what 
they should not have. He will not answer 
petitions which those who offer them are 
able to answer themselves. He will not 
prevent our plunging into moral ruin, 
though we pray to be led not into tempta- 
tion and be delivered from evil, when we 
deliberately or wrecklessly go into forbid- 
den paths. 

There can be no harm done in praying 
that the sick be restored to health, that the 
lame be made to walk, that the blind be 
given sight, though there are fewer prayers 
for such things answered as they are of- 
fered than many claim and want the world 


Prayer and Providence. sys 


to believe. It is not disputed that they do 
sometimes occur. But it would be easier 
to determine their frequency if all super- 
stition, imagination, deception, and igno- 
rance in each instance were cleared away. 
The truth is that the best people get sick 
and die, notwithstanding their recovery is 
the subject of the prayers of many whose 
piety and faith can not be questioned. And 
the worst get well, though no prayer is of- 
fered in their behalf. What little human 
mind then can tell when such prayers are 
answered in the way they are offered? 
Not one. 

Often good people pray for directly op- 
posite results. During the late Civil War 
millions of devout prayers were offered for 
the triumph of the Confederate arms, 
while as many and as God-fearing people 
prayed that victory might come to those 
who bore the Stars and Stripes. Christian 
generals and Christian soldiers in the ranks 
fought and prayed against each other. 


174 God’s White Throne. 


God could not answer both as they prayed, 
but he did answer both in the best way for 
all. He gave us a better and a more united 
country. 

All true prayer is answered in the 
way that seems best to infinite goodness 
and wisdom, though it may not be as we 
ask. ‘‘O my Father, if it be possible let 
this cup pass from me,”’ may be the soul’s 
cry; but if it is from a spirit that reposes 
in the Father’s care, it will always be quali- 
fied by the humble submission—‘‘never- 
theless, not as I will, but as thou wilt.’ 
And when those who know not what prayer 
means deny its efficacy and wonder that the 
afflicted do not fly petulantly into the face ° 
of providence, then the true and trustful 
child of God will ever answer: ‘The cup 
which my Father hath given me, shall I not 
drink it??? Though prayer is not always, 
perhaps not often, answered in the way 
that we ask, still it is answered. or vag 
in our ignorance of what is best for us, We 


Prayer and Providence. 175 


asked for what would be a serpent, instead 
of a fish, do you think he will not rather 
give us a fish? It is always the good things 
of the Spirit that he gives. If the thorn is 
not removed, he gives grace sufficient to 
bear it. If the cup does not pass, behold 
an angel will be sent to strengthen us, 
which is far better. 


CHAPTER VIII. 


Tuer I_LustrRious SUFFERER. 


It is better to know how to suffer well, 
than it is to be exempt from it. The lesson 
may be hard to learn and the experience 
disagreeable, but if we endure with forti- 
tude and faithful submission to the will of 
God we shall some time see its refining ef- 
fects in us and rejoice. In this is hidden 
the deepest philosophy of the loftiest life. 
In one form or another suffering in some 
measure is the lot of every man, but all 
learn more readily every other lesson than 
they do this of submissive suffering. But 
God who governs the world in righteous- 
ness has not failed to show his beneficence 
and his sympathy in teaching us the lesson 
which we so much need to know. 


This was in part the mission of our 
176 


The Lllustrious Sufferer. LG: 


Lord to the world. He came as the Savior 
of sinners, but the salvation of sinners im- 
plies instruction in the spiritual philosophy 
of bearing the burdens and sorrows and 
perplexities of life with heroic patience, a 
stout heart, and a filial trust. Christ came 
to teach the world not by precepts only, but 
chiefly, and with a much greater emphasis, 
by a living human example, how all the 
hardships of life can be made the path that 
leads to transfiguration heights. 

In the sufferings of his Son, God re- 
veals the sufferings which he himself 
shares in common with all mankind. It 
may not be strictly philosophical to make 
such a statement, but philosophy does not 
teach us the deepest truths of life, nor does 
it help us much in our understanding of 
them. That which concerns all men most, 
even men of science and culture and phi- 
losophy, is the understanding of the daily 
experiences that spring up from the depths 


of the heart as it is wrought upon by the 
12 


178 God’s White Throne. 


varied and numberless influences that 
crowd into human life. 

Pure reason might conceive of a God 
who reposes indifferently in his absolute 
sovereignty over his creation, but the heart 
requires a different idea of him. Out of 
the heart are the issues of life, and it intui- 
tively interprets the divine heart as it is— 
full of pity and compassion for suffering 
humanity. The issues of the human heart 
are all calls for help, and the issues of the 
divine heart are all answers to these calls. 
It is life with all its hopes and all its fears; 
life with its toils and its trials; life with its 
cares, its duties, and its responsibilities; 
life with its dangers, its mysteries, and its 
longings; life with its doubts, its darkness, 
and its despair; yes, it is life in all its 
depths, its significance, and its unknown 
future that lies closest the heart of every 
man, and it is this that touches into sym- 
pathy the heart of the Father. 

Hence even at the risk of being unphilo- 


| 
: 
= 
4 
. 


The Illustrious Sufferer. 179 


sophical it is safer and more helpful to be- 
hieve in a God who sympathizes with men; 
that is, one who suffers with them. It does 
not compromise his character to think of 
him in this light. We want a God who 
helps us, and there is nothing that helps 
us more than to know that God feels for us. 

Nor is such an idea so much of an out- 
rage on philosophy. For the absolute per- 
fection of God must imply that he has 
power to reveal himself under limitations. 
If he can not manifest himself in forms 
that are less than infinite, he can not be 
even infinite. He is bound by limitations 
of the infinite, which is contradictory. If 
he is infinite, he must be able to descend 
into the finite. If this were not true, he 
could not even be the creator of the world; 
for it consists wholly of finite forms of the 
infinite; neither could he make himself 
known in ways plain enough for human un- 
derstanding. We can not reach up to the 


180 God’s White Throne. 


infinite, but the infinite can and must come 
down to us. 

God suffers with us; we know it, and 
love to feel that it is true. The sufferings 
of our Lord are the revealed sufferings of 
the infinite Father’s heart. In his trustful 
submission we see the spirit in which the 
Father would have us endure the ordeals 
of life, and in his glorification which fol- 
lowed his life of trials and toils and tears 
we are taught the compensation which 
awaits all who follow his steps. No fault 
can be found with the government of God 
because of the existence of suffering among 
men. For the good of man requires it. 
But the glory of God’s reign is revealed in 
his appointment of his only begotten Son 
to teach us how to suffer. 

But we should not think that because 
Christ was divine his experiences in life 
were less painful and more easily borne 
than ours—making them a mere show. It 
was their reality that makes him a real 


The Illustrious Sufferer. 181 


Brother to us. His experiences were not a 
pretense. He has not so deceived us. 
Though he may not have experienced all 
the peculiar trials which this one or that 
has endured, yet so great, so numerous, so 
varied, and so typical were they that he is 
able to enter into sympathy with every 
soul, and all men may feel that his heart is 
touched with compassion for them. 

‘Too much stress has never been placed 
on the physical sufferings of our Lord and 
Master, but certainly too little emphasis has 
been attached to his mental anguish and 
the violence done his every sense of right- 
eousness and spiritual propriety. Rever- 
ence requires caution when we come to 
compare the physical sufferings of the 
Man of sorrows with those of other men; 
for we do not know to what degree they 
were intensified by the indescribable suffer- 
ings of his soul. We do not know how 
much greater power of endurance or how 
much more sensitiveness to pain the body 


{82 God’s White Throne. 


of a sinless man possesses than that of a 
man who has weakened the fiber of every 
nerve by sin and bears in his body the con- 
sequences of the sins of his fathers. 
Neither do we know how much more crush- 
ing to his body were the great mental con- 
flicts of Christ than are the mental strug- 
gles of the average man as they weigh upon 
his physical nature. 

But our Lord was a toiler of the toilers. 
He glorified the lot of the laborer by being 
himself a carpenter. It seems that from 
his youth there rested upon him the respon- 
sibility of supporting a widowed mother 
and a family of brothers and sisters. In 
addition to this there can be no doubt that 
he devoted much time to meditation, to 
fasting, to prayer, to the study of the law 
and the prophets, and to charitable deeds 
and sacrifices such as characterized his 
public ministry. 

When the silent years at Nazareth were 
ended he began his public life hardened for 


The Illustrious Sufferer. 188 


the hardships which it required. Weari- 
ness, hunger, and exposure must have been 
almost daily experiences with him as he 
journeyed from city to city and from coun- 
try to country, by day and by night, alone, 
with his friends, his foes, or the curious, 
selfish, morbid-minded multitude. He was 
not complaining of his lot when he said, 
‘Foxes have holes, the birds of the air 
have nests, but the Son of man hath not 
where to lay his head.’’ He was stating 
a fact. 

It may not be irreverent to say that 
these sufferings and privations of our Lord 
did not surpass those of the vast majority 
of toiling men and women of to-day. Nor 
would love be less ardent if it should be 
said that many have suffered as intensely 
as the Master did during the last day of his 
life in the flesh. But when we have said 
this let us reverently draw a pall over 
those hours of cruelty and crime against 
innocence and love. They can not be de- 


184 God’s White Throne. 


scribed without detracting from their in- 
tensity and the love that bore them. De- 
scription would be desecration, and the 
failure to portray them a mitigation of the 
moral madness of those who put him to 
death. 

Our Lord’s sufferings were mental 
more than physical, and in this respect he 
shares the lot of the great mass of human 
sufferers. Men suffer in mind more than 
in body. In common with all other men 
the Master experienced the destitution that 
is due to loneliness. There is, however, a 
kind of loneliness experienced by others 
which he never knew. He never felt the 
loneliness that is caused by selfishness, sin, 
or sensitiveness. But how many there are 
who feel lost and deserted even while they 
mingle with the multitude, because they 
have broken every bond of friendship and 
ruined all the respect of their fellow-men 
by their obnoxious claims of superiority 
aud their ambitions to supersede others by 


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: 
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: 
{ 
4 
i 
4 


The Illustrious Sufferer. 185 


any method no matter how unscrupulous! 
How many there are, too, who have made 
themselves utterly repulsive by lives of sin 
and have driven from them all associates 
except companions in crime and sin! and 
even they often make loneliness more 
lonely and the desert-life more dreary. 
And how many there are who are so sus- 
picious of the sincerity and faithfulness of 
their friends that they make their own lives 
miserable, while they merit the loss of 
those who are worthy and true! 

Our Lord was lonely, but from none of 
these causes. Nor was it due to the mere 
absence of others. That in itself does not 
leave a soul alone. Loyal friendship and 
true love know of no confines. They will 
fill a desert with a multitude though no one 
be near, while the lack of them leaves the 
soul alone, even though a crowd be press- 
ing on every hand. The Master had 
friends and followers who loved him as 
well as they knew how, but he was to them 


186 God’s White Throne. 


all a mystery. His views were so lofty 
and broad, his vision so far, his purpose so 
high, his character so matchless that he 
was a sting to the conscience of his gener- 
ation and a constant disappointment to his 
disciples. He stood absolutely alone in the 
world for the want of friends who were 
able to have more than a faint idea of the 
real greatness of his character and mission. 
He came unto his own, and his own re- 
ceived him not. Neither did his brethren 
believe on him. There were times in his 
life when he seemed to feel desolate for the 
want of sympathy. 

When he had finished that wonderful 
discourse on Everlasting Life in the syna- 
gogue at Capernaum, how grieved he felt 
because many of his disciples were of- 
fended and said it was a hard saying and 
refused to hear it. His deep humanity 
longed for sympathizers who touched souls 
with him, and when from that time many 
of his disciples turned away to walk with 


The Illustrious Sufferer. 187 


him no more, with what sad, lonely anxiety 
he turned to the twelve and asked if they, 
too, would leave him! 

Again his suffering weighed upon his 
soul in Gethsemane as he alternately 
sought consolation, first from his Father in 
prayer, then from his weary disciples. He 
felt the need of help from both, but his dis- 
ciples failed him in his hour of greatest 
need. How utterly abandoned by them he 
must have felt when he returned to them 
from communion with God and found them 
asleep, while the tumultuous mob, led by 
the apostate disciple, was approaching to 
arrest him! Who can conceive of the dis- 
appointment which wrung from his lonely 
heart the words, ‘‘What, could you not 
watch with me one hour?’’ In that hour 
of peril he was concerned for his disciples 
as well as himself, but chiefly for them. 
And yet his humanity craved human com- 
fort as well as divine, and when his only 
friends aliowed the weakness of the flesh 


188 God’s White Throne. 


to overcome their willing spirits his trial 
was truly great. He had warned them of 
their weakness, and told them that they 
would be unfaithful; and so they were. 
Thomas doubted him, Peter denied him, 
Judas betrayed him, all forsook him. 
Lonely, deserted Sufferer! Behold him 
in the council chamber of the Church, while 
his silent greatness so exasperates the 
guilty souls of the high priest, the chief 
priests, the scribes, the elders, and the en- 
tire council that they throw aside all re- 
straint and justice as one and all they be- 
gin to spit upon him and beat him with 
rods, and, blinding him, strike him in the 
face with their fists, and taunt him by de- 
manding that he prophesy who it was that 
struck him! Behold him as he stands in 
Pilate’s court, while from thousands of 
throats is heard the mad verdict that is in- 
stigated by the apostate Church hierarchy, 
Crucify him! Crucify him! Behold him 
in the guard room given over to the Roman 


The Illustrious Sufferer. 189 


soldiers, who crown him with thorns, strip 
him and throw about him a east-off robe, 
beat him in the face with their fists, insult 
him, mock him, and, bowing their knees 
before him, derisively hail him as King of 
the Jews! Beho!d him again as he hangs 
spiked, hands and feet, to the cross, and as 
you look through tearful eyes listen to what 
he says: ‘‘ My God, My God, why hast thou 
forsaken me!’’ Lonely, illustrious Suf- 
ferer! Truly he trod the winepress alone, 
and of the people there were none with him. 

Have any been misunderstood and mis- 
judged when they had no motive but the 
highest, followed no course but the truest? 
Have any lost their associates and been 
shunned by friends because, on account of 
their plain living and high thinking, they 
were regarded as too good to get the best 
enjoyment out of life? Have any grown 
old, so that the years have taken from them 
the friends of their youth, their life-long 
associates, and their nearest and dearest 


190 God’s White Throne. 


kinsman? Have not even their children 
and the companions who, through a half- 
century or more shared their joys and their 
sorrows, been spared them? Do they look 
around them for the attention and the rela- 
tion that they once enjoyed, and find that 
the busy world has passed them by and for- 
gotten them? 

Have some been thrust into seclusion 
and retirement by affliction? Once they 
were familiar and influential spirits in the 
business world; they were active in the af- 
fairs of public life, their voices and their 
devotion were given to the good of hu- 
manity, the Church of God, and the cause 
of the Cross. Their enthusiasm still burns 
with the same old fire. They desire to take 
their places again in the world’s activities, 
but they find that they are little missed and 
little mentioned, while their places are filled 
by others. Are they not lonely? Are the 
griefs of some so great that they can not 
be comforted, even though true friends 


The Illustrious Sufferer. 191 


shed tears of sympathy and try to fill the 
places once occupied by others? Are the 
lives of some but deserts, because in their 
distress they fear that even God has for- 
saken them? Lonely souls, with sorrow- 
bowed heads and grief-broken hearts, who- 
ever you may be and whatever the cause of 
your loneliness, God as a Father suffers 
with you and has revealed his fatherly feel- 
ing for you in the suffering, lonely Christ. 

Again, no man ever had the true sense 
of right and spiritual propriety that our 
Lord had. His sinlessness, his lofty ideals, 
and his keen perception enabled him al- 
ways to strike the line of cleavage between 
right and wrong with perfect exactness. 
His judgment of the motives of men was 
therefore always just, and the wrong that 
they did to others was always an outrage 
upon himself. For, as he mingled with men 
in an age of sham and injustice and crime 
and cruelty and corruption, his high sense 


192 God’s White Throne. 


of what was just, pure, humane, sacred, 
was violated as that of no other man ever 
was. The cause of truth, humanity, and 
God lay so close to his heart, was so woven 
into his entire nature that all wrong and 
irreverence was to himself a personal in- 
jury. It was not a fit of passion that pos- 
sessed him when he drove the traders in 
sheep and oxen and doves from the temple 
and overturned the tables of the money- 
changers. To him nothing in God’s world 
was without sacred significance, but no 
place was so holy as the house of prayer, 
and when he saw the temple defiled by the 
filth of birds and beasts, and desecrated 
by avarice, all the sensibilities of his soul 
were lacerated to the point of intense suf- 
fering. So consumed was he by his zeal 
for spiritual proprieties and reverence for 
his Father’s house, that those who had 
turned it into a den of thieves fled from his 
presence, so transfigured was his person 
and so commanding his tones as he de- 


The Illustrious Sufferer. 193 


nounced their greed of gain in the house of 
the Lord. 

His condemnation of the scribes and 
Pharisees was not an invective tirade 
against his enemies; for he loved his ene- 
mies as he taught that others should. But 
he saw piety turned into a pretense by the 
religious teachers of his time. He saw how 
they shut up the kingdom of heaven against 
men and went not in themselves; how they 
devoured widows’ houses and for a pre- 
tense made long prayers; how they com- 
passed sea and land to make one proselyte, 
who, when he was made, was but a child 
of perdition; how they painfully kept the 
letter of the law and the traditions of men, 
while they omitted the weightier matters 
of judgment, mercy, faith, and love toward 
God; how they loved the uppermost seats 
in the synagogues and the greetings of the 
market-place; how they bound on men bur- 
dens that were grievous to bear, while they 


touched them not with one of their fingers; 
13 


194 God’s White Throne. 


how they disfigured their faces and put on 
a sad countenance that they might appear 
unto men to fast, while they were full of 
all hatred and hypocrisy. 

Such insincerity toward God, such deg- 
radation of holy office, such wrong done 
the sacred rights of souls, such blind lead- 
ing of the blind, such obstruction to the 
entrance into the kingdom of God was to 
him high crime against all that is holy in 
heaven and earth. It grieved him. It was 
a sight that saddened him wherever he 
went as long as he lived. They might call 
him a sinner, a Sabbath breaker, a blas- 
phemer, a devil, a mad man; they might 


dog him at every step, ply him with catch — 


questions, try to trap him, weave a web of 
conspiracy about him, stir up the people 
against him, incite the fear and jealousy of 
the civil power, resolve on putting him to 
death; all this he could endure with equa- 
nimity, and utter not a word in self-defense. 
But the moral crime of the age and the 


The Illustrious Sufferer. 195 


hypocritical religious tyranny of his time 
were to him a perpetual grief. They re- 
quired rebuke; and in his scathing, consum- 
ing denunciation of them there must have 
been in his voice such inimitable pathos and 
power, and in his face such an expression 
of sadness, sweetness, and fearlessness as 
to terrify his foes and sting them into fury 
as he tore the mask from their depravity. 

Our Lord also suffered from his close 
and life-long contact with the power of 
darkness. Objects of shame and sin that 
he everywhere witnessed and the moral ob- 
tuseness toward truth and right and purity 
that characterized the crowds _ that 
thronged him were a source of sadness. 
For he was grieved at the hardness of 
men’s hearts, their sensuality, their mor- 
bid curiosity, their self-interest, and their 
slowness to believe. But he also suffered 
from the temptations which he underwent. 
There could have been no significance in 
his temptations if in them he did not suffer, 


196 God’s White Throne. 


and suffer terribly. To have sin and un- 
belief suggested to his pure mind through 
forty days of fearful conflict must have 
been an ordeal the severity of which is 
more than we can imagine. 

Nor were his trials ended in the wilder- 
ness. We are told that when the devil 
had ended al! these temptations he de- 
parted from him for a season. The plain 
inference is that other temptations fol- 
lowed, and that all through life he had sea- 
sons of moral conflict against sin, just as 
all his brethren in the flesh have. He suf- 
fered as we all suffer in resisting evil, and 
we love him because of this fact. 

All of our Lord’s sufferings were in 
their spirit vicarious; that is, they were all 
voluntarily endured for others. But there 
is another meaning to his suffering too 
deep for any finite mind to fathom. He suf- 
fered in our stead—the just for the unjust. 
He bore our sins in his own body on the 
tree. The Lord hath laid on him the in- 


The Illustrious Sufferer. 197 


iquity of us all. The Bible abounds with 
passages, teaching that In some way Christ 
bore the sins of a sinful world. And yet it 
is impossible for sin to be transferred from 
one person to another. And if it were pos- 
sible it would take with it the guilt of the 
sinner, so that if Christ could be burdened 
with the sins of men he would thereby be 
the chief of sinners. But this is a thought 
too terrible to entertain. Theories and 
theories have been formed to explain the 
sense in which Christ suffered for the sins 
of the world. But they are only theories. 
Upon this profound theme the Bible, how- 
ever, does not theorize. It is proclaimed 
as a precious fact that Christ lived, suf- 
fered, died, and rose from the dead to save 
men from sin, and give unto them enduring 
life. Language labors to tell even this 
much. It tells the fact in its many phases, 
but the deep and the eternal truth itself 
belongs to that large class of spiritual mys- 


198 God’s White Throne. 


teries that wait for us until our beclouded 
vision is clear enough to see. 

Now, in all of his suffering what was 
the spirit in which he bore them? Never 
did he complain, never was he censorious 
or morose, never did he doubt or despair, 
never did he envy others their easier lot 
or shrink from his own. Never did he 
blame others for any of his sufferings or 
show an unkind spirit toward even his be- 
trayer or those who conspired against him 
to send him to the cross. Through all his 
physical sufferings, his sad loneliness, the 
violence done his sense of right and relig- 
ious propriety, his conflicts with the evil 
powers, and his atoning life and death, our 
Lord was always the same serene, majestic 
Being. 

There is always grandeur in a godly 
life. While one holds firmly to the powers 
above, they in turn hold him, and he feels 
the security which they afford. This truth 
is exemplified to us in the matchless life 


The Illustrious Sufferer. 199 


of the Son of man. He believed that all 
wrong was doomed to a final overthrow, 
and that evil-doers would meet with a like 
fate. He believed that this was his 
Father’s world, and that nothing could 
pluck from his hand any who trusted in 
him. He believed his Father guarded the 
eternal interests of his moral kingdom, and 
that all who fell into its sweet harmony had 
enduring life. He believed that all men 
were the children of the heavenly Father, 
and that the Father and the children could 
hold communion with each other. 

He therefore committed himself unre- 
servedly, trustfully, lovingly to his Father 
and to the future with its fulfilled prom- 
ises, and he had his compensation. While 
he was in the world he had glorified his 
Father, and confidently expected to re- 
ceive from him reward for his suffering, 
his service, and his devotion, and he was 
not disappointed. So confident was he of 
his Father’s faithfulness, of the transitori- 


200 God’s White Throne. 


ness of suffering, and of the eternal tri- 
umph of all that is holy, just, and true, that 
at the moment when one of his chosen 
twelve turned his back on him and that 
holy fraternity of disciples, when almost 
within hearing of the brutal mob that came 
to arrest him, when the mockings of the 
trial were sounding in his ears, and when 
in the very shadow of the cross, he could 
say to his broken band of followers: ‘‘ Now 
is the Son of man glorified, and God is 
glorified in him.’’ Such were the suffer- 
ings of Christ and the glory that followed. 

Thus does God interpret himself in 
Christ. Thus does he vindicate the white- 
ness of his throne to a suffering world. He 
has not left us to grope in darkness and 
despair, not knowing whether there ever 
shall be any beneficent compensation for 
our sufferings, our faith, and our patience. 
For our sake his own heart was moved with 
tender compassion; for our sake his well 
beloved Son became the incarnate revela- 


The Illustrious Sufferer. 201 


tion of those sufferings; for our sake he 
bore them with fortitude and faith in God; 
for our sake he learned obedience by the 
things which he suffered; for our sake he, 
the captain of our salvation, was made per- 
fect through suffering; for our sake God 
glorified him to teach us that if we suffer 
we shall be glorified with him. Illustrious 
Sufferer, help us to have the mind that was 
in thee and follow thy footsteps! Heavenly 
Father, help us to believe that thou doest 
all things well, and patiently to wait until 
we can understand. 


CHAPTER IX. 
THe SUPREMACY OF LOVE. 


VanquisHep faith, sincere doubt, and 
honest inquiry may still wonder why God 
should create a world that involves so much 
mystery and pain. But this amounts to the 
same as wondering why he created the 
world at all. For, had he created a world 
that was free from suffering and mystery, 
it would have been so unlike the world 
which he has created, and we should have 
been so unlike what we are, that another 
world and a different order of beings from 
what exists would have taken precedence. 
The question is then the same as asking 
why he made this worid instead of some 
imaginary world which we vainly faney 
he might better have made. Such ques- 


tions are both foolish and arrogant. 
202 


_ I nS 


The Supremacy of Love. 203 


The fact is that he has created this world 
and has created us and placed us init. This 
is all that common sense calls on any one 
to consider. We are not arrogantly and 
ignorantly to inquire into what God might 
have done, but reverently and thoughtfully 
to study into what he has done, that we 
may get more nearly to the heart of things, 
and receive consolation from the assurance 
that there is beneficence and wisdom in the 
world’s order. 

But what was God’s motive in creation? 
This is a fair question, for its answer leads 
to devout meditation on his good-will 
toward us when he brought us into being 
and fitted up this world for our habitation. 
God could have had no other motive in cre- 
ation than supreme love. No other motive 
is conceivable in the heart of infinite good- 
ness. He could not have created the world 
for himself alone, for that would be making 
him the very personification of selfishness. 
He could not have made it because he was 


204 God’s White Throne. 


in need of it, for that would make him a 
being who is not self-sufficient. He could 
not have created it because he had to do 
it, for that would mean that there was a 
power above him compelling him to do it. 
It is absurd to think that he did it without 
any interest at all in what he was doing, or 
that he did it as a mere pastime. 

But what could his motive have been? 
What must it have been? To this there can 
be no other answer than that the God of all 
perfections could have had no other object 
in his creation than that of bringing into 
life beings who, like himself, would be able 
to think and feel and love and choose and 
take delight in all that is pure and beau- 
tiful and true. Knowing that he himself 
was the personification of all that is excel- 
lent and the source of all that is true and 
good, God brought man into being that he 
might hold fellowship with his Creator and 
learn to love him for the good that he would 
derive from such holy relation. God cre- 


ee 


The Supremacy of Love. 205 


ated man for the purpose of adding to the 
universe more of the rapture which he feels 
in the truth and the holy harmony of things. 
It is a joy to him, for their sake, to have 
his creation take delight in him. 

Love was supreme in creation. As 
white light is the blending of all the prime 
colors of the solar spectrum, so love is the 
harmonious balance and blending of all 
moral and intellectual attributes; and in- 
finite love is the harmonious union of all 
God’s perfect attributes. In his ereation 
God put forth his entire self. He is love; 
therefore in all his handiwork love was 
supreme. Love accounts for the world, and 
accounts for its being continually what it 
is. For creation was not a single act that 
God put forth unknown ages ago; but it is 
a continuous act. He ever constitutes the 
“world what it is by his changeless, creative 
love. 

In all things love reigns supreme. It 
is in the harmony of the spheres, in every 


206 God’s White Throne. 


beam of light, in every shadow of solitude, 
in every sighing breeze, in every scene of 
grandeur. It gives sweetness and rhythm 
to all life, it flashes in every erystal, it 
blossoms into loveliness in every flower, it 
burnishes every thing of beauty, and rip- 
ples into all the laughter and song of earth 
and sky. 

It is most delightful and profitable to 
dwell on the divine beatitudes that beam in 
radiant love in God’s world everywhere. 
They do not engage our thoughts as much 
as they should. If we read their messages 
to us they would fill our faces with sun- 
shine and our souls with song. Most peo- 
ple, both the fortunate and the afflicted, 
take the world and life too sadly. We live 
too much in the dark hemisphere. But if 
we tried we could trace even in the dark- 
ness the lines of light that reveal God’s love 
for us. For love reigns in the darkness as 
well as in the light. It reigns as much and 
probably more where we can not see it as 


The Supremacy of Love. 207 


where we can. It is for the want of sight, 
and not on account of the absence of love, 
that we are unable always to see it. The 
eye untrained for the beautiful can not see 
beauty where the eye of the artist observes 
it with delight. The vulgar eye may prefer 
a common chromo to a masterpiece of 
Raphael, but.the master artist knows their 
respective values at sight. 

The highest type of the beautiful is that 
of the spirit, and if we do not see love 
supreme everywhere it is because our eyes 
are not perfectly trained for the spiritual 
art. Gently the rays of light fall upon us 
from the Sun of Righteousness, but we can 
not follow them back to their source. Too 
much of the earth are we for that. Wemay 
be able to read the illustrations of love in 
the more agreeable experiences and scenes 
of life, but hidden in the mysteries tuat 
surround us are depths of love into which 
angels desire to look. 

There is a hemisphere of light, and no 


208 God’s White Throne. 


number of volumes could tell all the plain 
manifestations of supreme love that com- 
pose it. But there is a dark hemisphere 
also, which is to us as great a reality as the 
light; for it is what we see that is real to 
us, even though it would prove to be unreal 
if we saw all things as they are. God sees 
no darkness at all. To him all is light, and 
he is the Father of it. Hence love reigns 
in the darkness as well as in the light. 
Love reigns in all the laws that govern 
the world and human life. So beneficent 
are these laws that they are almost iden- 
tical with love. For the laws are God’s 
ways of working and governing in the 
world and in human affairs, and love is the 
coneurrent activity of all his powers. It 
is therefore not far from the truth, if in- 
deed it be not in fact the actual truth, to 
say that love is law, and law is love. If 
there is severity and pain and death and 
deep mystery attending these love-laws 
that govern us, it is due, not to their char- 


LY oe Le ee 


The Supremacy of Love. 209 


acter, but to our violation of them. And 
even in this penalty there is love. For the 
laws are not for the purpose of destroying 
men’s lives, but saving them. The love is 
couched in the moral purpose that is hid- 
den in them. But if they were all cush- 
ioned with down, so that when we ruth- 
lessly ran against them we would not be 
hurt, there would be no love in them. If 
in our ignorance or full knowledge of them 
we disregard their mandates and they send 
us back to the better way, there is love in 
them, even though we return bruised and 
bleeding. 

Thus it is that suffering prevents suf- 
fering, calamity cures calamity, death 
lengthens life, ignorance stimulates intelli- 
gence, and sin tends to make itself horrible. 
A clearer sense of duty and a greater con- 
scientiousness are quickened. Their sever- 
ity and impartiality force the individual 
to greater care and more strenuous effort 


to avoid injury to himself; and if he has 
14 


210 God’s White Throne. 


the heart of a brother, they lead him to 
guard well the interests of his fellow-men. 
Records abound showing how whole com- 
munities and cities and states and nations 
have taken steps to stop or to prevent the 
spread of disease and poverty and crime 
and accident. The brain and heart of the 
world are continually at work in every con- 
ceivable way endeavoring to lift men into 
a life where they will not kill themselves 


by standing in the unalterable course of the 


laws of God. For none of his laws were 
made for those who keep them, but they 
are all made to be schoolmasters to lead to 
a better life the ignorant and the evil-doer. 
If this were not the order of divine govern- 
ment, no care or effort would be taken to 
rise above the laws, and the mental and 
moral life of the world would remain unde- 
veloped. These laws are then not the reek- 
ings of wrath, but the loving arms of a 
Fatner thrown around us to restrain us 


a ee _ 


The Supremacy of Love. 211 


trom wrong and constrain us to the right. 
His love-laws are then our life-laws. 

By such guardianship over us we get 
some idea of what sort. of beings we are. 
One might be so impressed with the sub- 
limity of the silent, speechless mountain 
that lifts its white peak above the clouds 
as to worship in silence at its altar; so sug- 
gestive is it of the Infinite. But what is a 
mountain as compared with a man? It 
thinks not, neither does it feel or hope or 
love or have a duty or a destiny. The in- 
spired bard of Israel gave us the true esti- 
mate of man’s greatness as compared with 
material things, when he said: ‘‘When I 
consider thy heavens the works of thy fin- 
gers, the moon and the stars which thou 
hast ordained, what is man that thou art 
mindful of him, or the son of man that 
thou visitest him?’’ Had he been a mate- 
rialist, here he would have ended his song 
and thought of man as only an atom, lost 


912 God’s White Throne. 


and unknown in the glorious galaxy of re- 
volving worlds. But he was not a material- 
ist. He saw man’s place in the universe, 
and had some conception of God’s estimate 
of his worth. Hence he continued: ‘‘Thou 
hast made him to lack little of divinity, and 
hast crowned him with glory and honor. 
Thou hast made him to have dominion over 
the works of thy hands; thou hast put all 
things under his feet.’’ Because man is 
made in the Creator’s image, love supreme 
hovers over him and throws its protection 
around him. So hedged in is he with love 
that he can not get away from God without 
hurting himself. 

Again, the supremacy of love is re- 
vealed in human redemption. If man has 
sinned, love reigns to redeem him from it. 
Had God abandoned the race when sin en- 
tered the world, love would have been 
missed when needed most. It might 
abound in divine government everywhere 
else, but if it should not be manifest in re- 


Ba eeciellines srr. year tink 


he 
ag ae 


tO ae a a a a ee 


The Supremacy of Love. 213 


deeming grace its greatest monument 
would not appear, and the throne which 
love makes white would no longer be stain- 
less. But man is redeemed. God so loved 
the world that he gave his only begotten 
Son, that whosoever believeth in him might 
not perish, but have everlasting life. 

But redemption was not an _ after- 
thought that flashed into the divine mind 
when sin entered the world. The substance 
of redemption was born of supreme love, 
and that love is as eternal as God. Time 
has no bearing whatever on the loving pur- 
pose of God toward his creation. Redemp- 
tion is an eternal fact, but it became histor- 
ically manifest in the world when sin be- 
came a fact of human experience. Nor did 
redeeming love first appear when the Son 
of God was manifest to take away our sins. 
Men were saved from sin before Christ 
came, for God loved them as much before 
he came as he has since. In all nations and 
in all ages love divine proclaims that he 


214: God’s White Throne. 


who feareth God and worketh righteous- 
ness is accepted of him. 

But as redemption is an eternal fact, it 
is also one of the eternal secrets known to 
God alone. How it is possible for man to 
be redeemed from sin we never shall know. 
All attempts to explain its mystery must 
begin and end in speculation. The fact is, 
that God can be just and the justifier of 
him that believes in Jesus, and Christ the 
eternal Son of the Father has ever been in 
person the expression of that redeeming 
love. The highest point in the manifesta- 
tion of that love was the incarnation. But 
the Son of God was the Lamb of God slain 
from the foundation of the world. He was 
also the central factor in human redemp- 
tion through all the ages that preceded his 
hfe on earth. While in the world he had 
power to forgive sins, and since his ascen- 
sion on high he has been the world’s only 
hope. The dispensation of the Spirit, 
which began in a fuller measure upon the 


The Supremacy of Love. 915 


glorification of the Redeemer, is but the 
continuation of the same eternal redeem- 
ing love that mercifully flows from the 
heart of the Father. The same eternal, 
mysterious, glorious fact of redemption 
through Christ continues in his interces- 
sion with the Father for us. What that 
means we can not know, but it certainly 
can not be that the God of eternal compas- 
sion must be pleaded with to be persuaded 
to show pity and grant forgiveness and 
eternal life to sinful men. Nevertheless the 
truth is revealed that the Savior of the 
world in some gracious sense still continues 
on high the work which his Father gave 
him to do. Christ the eternal Son is the 
essential factor in human redemption. He 
co-ordinates and gives significance and 
force to all other facts and influences that 
work for man’s salvation. 

Again, love supreme is manifest in the 
conditions and the completeness of salva- 
tion. We are not saved in our sins, but 


216 God’s White Throne. 


from them. It would only be mocking us 
to save us in them. However, to be saved 
in our sins is not only a contradiction of 
terms, but is inconceivable on God’s part. 
There is no salvation which is not a trans- 
formation into the moral image of God, and 
that means the forsaking of our sins be- 
cause we hate them, and our coming to 
Christ because we love him. Call it convic- 
tion, repentance, consecration, confession, 
restitution, duty, service—call it all these 
things; for, losing sight of one’s self and 
contemplating the character and the match- 
less mercies of the Savior and submitting 
our wills and hearts and service to him 
without reserve forever, implies them all. 

But so great is the love of God in Christ 
Jesus that our coming to him means rather 
our willingness to let him come to us. The 
Son of man is come to seek and to save that 
which is lost. It is not the sinner who is 
the seeker, but Christ. It is not Christ who 
is unwilling, but the sinner. It is not the 


The Supremacy of Love. 217 


sinner who pleads, but Christ. It is not 
Christ who is changed, but the sinner. 
Wholly to abandon and abhor sin is to 
transfer the affections to its opposite, 
which is purity. Wholly to surrender self 
is to yield to Christ. 

The completeness of our salvation de- 
pends upon the thoroughness of our conse- 
eration to Christ, for he is able to save unto 
the uttermost all them that come unto God 
by him. Call his salvation justification, re- 
generation, adoption, sanctification, the 
inner witness. Call it all of these; for, 
when we without reserve submit ourselves 
to Christ, he graciously forgives our sins; 
he invigorates our moral nature by the gift 
of his life; he owns us as his brethren, and 
the Father owns us as his children in and 
through his well beloved Son; the hfe 
which he imparts begins the process of 
renovating us of the dead remnants of the 
sinful life; and the Spirit inspires in us a 
clearer spiritual knowledge of our relation 


218 God’s White Throne. 


with God, and reveals to us so fully the fact 
that we are in moral union with him that 
we can with joy exclaim, ‘‘My Father!’ 
and feel that the Father’s response to us 
is, ‘My child!’ 

In both the beginning and the develop- 
ment of the Christian life there is a uni- 
formity and a continuity of process that is 
due to the life principle which Christ, who 
is our life, imparts to us, and which has its 
exact analogy in the developing process of 
every living thing. Upon this Christ-given 
life there are placed no limitations either 
as to possibilities or duration, because it is 
a life both divine and eternal. We are par- 
takers of the divine nature, and because 
Christ lives we shall live also. 

But what finite mind can approach in 
thought or imagination the sublime signifi- 
cance of Christ’s gift to the believing soul 
of eternal, imperishable life? It is a birth 
from above, and the life that wakes within 
at once begins to seek its heavenly source. 


The Supremacy of Love. 919 


Powers of soul that found in the lower 
sphere of life no conditions favorable for 
their development, at once begin to reach 
upward. Love finds in God and all things 
holy and just and good a world that is con- 
genial, attractive, and invigorating. Faith 
which was confined within limits too nar- 
row and too earthly for its nature at once 
takes hold on the unseen substance of spir- 
itual reality. Hope takes anchorage in the 
life beyond, and abides in the goodness of 
God. There is not a power of mind or 
heart which the new life in Christ does not 
wake to its normal, spiritual action. ‘The 
soul becomes allied with God, and enters 
into loving co-operation with him to make 
his world beautiful with love, joy, and 
peace. 

The saved soul becomes a component 
factor in the sweet harmony of God’s moral 
kingdom. And what a kingdom! And 
what a harmony! In duration it is from 


990 God’s White Throne. 


everlasting to everlasting. The granite 
hills shall melt away; the earth shall leave 
its orbit and fall into the chaos of crashing 
worlds; Orion, Arcturus, and Pleiades 
shall cease to travel the holy aisles of 
heaven; the sun shall be turned into dark- 
ness; the heavens shall be rolled back as a 
scroll, and as a vesture they shall be folded 
up; but beneath the scepter of the King 
eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise 
God, our Father, the kingdom of heaven 
shall still remain and move on in sweetest 
harmony with his holy will. For in it no 
forces ever clash, no laws ever fail, no 
truth ever goes astray, no beauty ever 
fades, no light ever loses its luster, no good 
ever grows less, no life ever gets old, no 
love ever becomes cold, no joy ever ceases, 
no harmony ever has a discord. From the 
time when the morning stars sang together 
and the sons of God first shouted for joy, 
rhythm and rapture have rolled upward 
and onward through all the boundless and 


The Supremacy of Love. 921 


endless moral universe as the sweet expres- 
sion of the mind and will of almighty God. 

This moral universe, this kingdom of 
heaven, is the home and the heritage of 
every child of God. He belongs to it, and 
it belongs to him. He is in it, and it is in 
him. He holds himself in harmony with 
it, and it fills his soul with its songs. He 
apprehends its truth, enjoys its beauties, 
and partakes of its holiness. ‘There is no 
place in it where he may not feel at home— 
no place where he has not a right to be; for 
it has been the Father’s good pleasure to 
give him the kingdom. His life is not 
measured by years, but by its possibilities 
and expansiveness. Divinity and eternity 
are born within him. Now he is a child of 
God, but it doth not yet appear what he 
shall be. 

We are all dependent upon God for all 
things at every moment and turn in life. 
He knows our needs far better than we 
know them, and far better than we think he 


922 God’s White Throne. 


knows them. He has a plan for the life of 
each of us, and down through all the years, 
from the dawn of life, his love reigns over 
us to realize his plan. It varies from gen- 
tleness to severity; nevertheless it is love 
in its wisest form that is always supreme 
above us. It reigns to win the wayward, 
to warn the wicked, to wake the indifferent, 
to lead the blind, to lift up the fallen, to 
support the weak, to cheer the faint- 
hearted, to comfort the sorrowful, to keep 
the tempted, to establish all with faith in 
the trustworthiness and lovingkindness of 
God in Christ. We also may say with 
Paul’s confidence: ‘‘I am persuaded that 
neither death nor life, nor angels nor prin- 
cipalities nor powers, nor things present 
nor things to come, nor height nor depth, 
nor any other creature shall be able to sep- 
arate us from the love of God which is in 
Christ Jesus our Lord.’’ 

We waste the substance of life in sin, 
but he sends his Spirit to call us back to 


The ‘Supremacy of Love. 223 


our better selves again and draw us to the 
cross in penitence and consecration, that 
we may be created anew in Christ Jesus. 
We break and defile the divine image that 
is in us, but he tenderly and forgivingly 
gathers up the fragments and causes them 
again to reflect his blessed face. We fritter 
away the years with their succession of 
golden opportunities, but he takes the rem- 
nants of wasted life which we bring and 
vives to them even unmeasured significance 
for the years and the eternities yet to come. 
We become attached to this world greatly 
to our spiritual detriment, but he sends 
misfortune and suffering and bereavement 
to make us tired of the transitory and long 
for the everlasting. 

Higher than the heavens are his 
thoughts than our thoughts and his ways 
than our ways. The problems of the world 
and life are infinitely complex, and we have 
no teacher to make them all plain to us. 
The teacher would need a grasp of things 


294 God’s White Throne. 


as great as God’s to understand them, and 
we should need one equally great to under- 
stand the explanation that the teacher 
might give. We know now only in part, 
but it is love that holds our eyes. Faith in 
that love will give us unspeakable peace. 
God’s world and our life in it are not un- 
derstood from the earthly and the human 
point of view. God’s angle of vision gives 
us the only true perspective of them. The 
farther we get away from the mysteries 
and misfortunes and sufferings that we see 
and experience, the less are they the occa- 
sion of doubt and despair, and the more of 
wisdom and love do they reveal. As the 
earthly recedes and the heavenly draws 
near, as closer and closer we approach the 
center of things, and more and more see 
them in God’s light, better shall we know 
as we are known, and be satisfied. 

We live in a wonderful world. God has 
made it so for our use. He wants it to be 
sufficient for all our simpler needs, as well 


The Supremacy of Love. 225 


as be suggestive of the boundlessness of 
the higher moral and spiritual world in 
which our immortal natures are to find 
their greatest activities and their richest 
enjoyments. The greatness that is without 
and the greatness that is within make life 
on a large plan possible. This more com- 
prehensive and commanding conception of 
things is infinitely more inspiring and sat- 
isfying to us than the earthly ideal in which 
the transitory or the trifling gives us end- 
less trouble. 

The dark hemisphere may vanquish 
faith, but it should not. For God ever 
reigns everywhere, in our darkness as well 
as in our light. He reigns in wisdom and 
love, never swerving from his eternal, be- 
neficent, moral purpose for the world and 
each individual. If his purpose fails, it 1s 
due to our intervention, never to his 1m- 
potence or indifference. To enable us to 
reach the goal to which we are appointed 
he mercifully provides all things that make 

15 


226 God’s White Throne. 


for life and godliness, and graciously lis- 
tens when we pray. He sends us his well- 
beloved Son to teach us how to take life 
and turn it and all our trials into mounts 
of moral transfiguration. Over all and in 
all he reigns in love. There is no other 
way than to trust his eternal wisdom and 
goodness. If the future should seem dark, 
God stands within the shadow keeping 
watch above his own. ‘There are many 
things which he desires to say unto us, but 
he knows that we can not bear them now. 
What he does we know not now, but we 
know we shall know hereafter. 


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